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EAW 16 Christine Dickson - On The Path Coaching · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
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  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
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  New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
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  Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
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  You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
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  Here on Equine Assisted World.
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  We look at the cutting edge and the best practices currently being developed and,
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  established in the equine assisted field.
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  This can be psychological, this can be neuropsych, this can be
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  physical, this can be all of the conditions that human beings have.
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  These lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with.
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  Thank you for being part of the adventure and we hope you enjoy today's show
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  Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
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  I've got Christine Dixon with me today.
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  If you don't know her, you soon will, and you should.
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  She is based out of Los Angeles.
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  She is an equine assisted coach, but she's much, much more than that.
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  And I'm going to let her Talk a little bit about the modalities that she uses
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  and how she uses them specifically with trauma and addiction and for those of
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  us who are working broader and broader in the field like us at Horsepoy and New
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  Trails where we got into it with autism and then naturally found this broadening
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  out into all sorts of areas of You know mental health we realize at certain
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  points that we need mentors And I was at the Warwick Schiller's Journey On Summit
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  in Birmingham in England this year.
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  And I'd met Christine before in California, but she was there
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  speaking again, and this is the first time I'd really had a
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  chance to properly listen to her.
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  And She shared in more depth about her work.
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  And so I thought I would try it out.
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  I thought this sounds really good I'm gonna try this thing that she does and
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  see if it works on some of my own, you know difficult histories and stories
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  and little traumas that are going around within me and she did her thing and it
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  worked interesting and it worked in a way that Usually, I'm used to seeing
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  when I'm engaging in the shamanic world.
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  And normally I don't bring that side into equine assisted world,
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  because it's a can of worms.
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  However, there are things that cross over in the shamanic world.
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  human consciousness in society, but also have good hard science behind them.
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  So without rambling too much more, I'm going to let Christine introduce herself
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  and advocate for her own awesomeness, and share with us some things that really
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  will inform us making our practices.
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  Okay, so Equine Assist.
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  Well, thank you for coming on.
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  Please tell us who you are and what you do.
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  Christine Dickson: Well, first, I'm really excited to be here because Yes,
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  we did connect in a deeper way at the Birmingham summit, because we kind of
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  were in this orbit of each other the other two times, but this time we really
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  talked and we've just had a lot of deep conversations that have been really fun.
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  So I'm excited to be here and have another one with you.
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  So
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  I, you know, these days I transformational mentor because.
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  That I'm trained in, in a few modalities that they all kind
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  of work together beautifully.
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  I, I got trained as a clinical hypnotherapist in 2004.
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  I've been trained as an advanced practitioner of IEMT, which is
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  integral eye movement technique.
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  And I have been doing equine assisted coaching for about five, six years now.
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  So all of those things as well as mentoring and coaching
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  people, they all work really well together and build on each other.
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  And the people that.
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  I think that I most attract and work with, or, you know, it's funny, they
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  say, like, you know, you typically work with people who are similar in
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  what their experiences are, right?
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  So I I tend to work with people who have either grown up in families where
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  they had one or both caregivers, whether that was a parent or grandparent,
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  had mental health issues, such as pathological personality disorders or
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  addiction, because the 2 things show up in, in much the same way you have
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  a, an emotionally and compassionate, Level person who is dysregulated.
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  So their compassion for others is greatly reduced
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  and that makes for a very unhealthy environment for a child because the child
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  then really early on learns that to adapt and survive in this environment, I'm
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  going to have to be able to read the room.
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  I'm gonna have to be able to read the nervous system and thoughts of the person
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  who's bigger than me and in charge.
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  I'm And that becomes a hypervigilance.
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  It becomes this kind of almost superpower where you can even tell by maybe the
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  way the footsteps are coming down the hallway of whether this is going
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  to be a good night or a bad night.
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  And, and that is so linked that kind of sensory projection and
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  hypervigilance is really correlated with high levels of empathy.
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  So we develop these high levels of connection and empathy and reading people.
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  The, the downside to that is that what we don't cultivate.
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  Is our own sense of self, we don't cultivate how we
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  feel in any given situation.
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  Like, like, does that make me feel good or bad?
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  Or do I like this or dislike it?
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  Because we're always reading the room and figuring out what other people are sensing
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  and feeling there and then adapting to them in order again, to be safe.
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  And so this creates a pattern where we only feel safe.
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  In how other people are perceiving us
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  and many times we grow up to take that pattern out into the world and find
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  ourselves in constantly similar situations because that's where our skill set is.
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  And even though we don't want to be in those situations.
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  To the 88 percent that is our subconscious mind, what is familiar is pleasurable.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Can you just repeat that?
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  Say that again.
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  Christine Dickson: So, to the subconscious.
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  Yes.
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  We call them, you know, in hypnotherapy, they're we, they're called knowns.
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  These are what we know, right?
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  To the subconscious knowns, which to the conscious mind could be abuse or
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  negative, but to the subconscious.
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  Knowns are pleasurable because we know how this works.
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  We've been here before.
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  It's like the devil you know.
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  So you could grow up in a very dysregulated, unhealthy, chaotic,
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  abusive environment and your conscious mind could dream about when you grow
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  up and you can't wait to get away from all of this and you dream about this
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  healthy life that you want to live.
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  But what's funny, or it's not funny at all, what is interesting,
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  let's say, is that the subconscious goes, hey, that's a great idea.
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  That looks cool.
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  But guess what?
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  We've never experienced that.
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  And because it's the unknown, it's, it's to be feared.
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  We're going to make you attracted to people in situations that
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  will repeat the patterns of your childhood because you know what?
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  You know how to do that.
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  So then we end up in relationships like romantic relationships with people that
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  could most of the time appear that they're Absolutely, not that and then once we
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  get further down the road we realize oh my gosh This is the same pattern
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  and then we go through the trauma of being In a relationship as an adult with
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  someone who's either battling addiction or has the same pathological personality
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  disorders, or what can be really, really heavy is that we are so broken down
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  spiritually.
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  Emotionally that in our, you know, these, these create cognitive dissonance,
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  meaning, like, we no longer know what's real and what's not what's true.
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  And what's not because we're constantly being blamed projected
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  lied to all of these things.
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  So, and instead of trying to clear and face it.
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  We take ourselves out and people will take themselves down by then using drugs and
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  alcohol to check out when actually facing and leaving the situation feels unbearable
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  and that the the worst part about that is that we've now become more
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  more and more vulnerable in the Relationship because that addiction
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  will be used against us to keep us in that cage and keep us in that box
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  Rupert Isaacson: Addiction is an interesting thing because we
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  tend to think of it as addiction to a substance or a behavior.
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  But I think that what you're talking about here is that what
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  we seem to be really addicted to is certain types of relationship.
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  As you say, because what's familiar, what's familiar.
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  We feel we know how to handle it.
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  So even if it's essentially unsafe, it's a danger that we know how to navigate.
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  Christine Dickson: I don't want to cut you up.
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  I just want to make one clarification.
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  I wouldn't call it an addiction.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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  Christine Dickson: And the reason I wouldn't call an addiction is because
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  there's a conscious aspect to addiction.
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  You know, when you're picking up A bottle of alcohol, right?
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  You know when you're picking up a drug you may feel powerless to it, but you know,
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  you're doing it We're talking about an unconscious Program that exists in your
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  mind That even though consciously you think you're making good choices and not
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  choosing it, you don't see the red flags because your tolerance level of those red
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  flags has been trained to be so high that you just don't see it until it gets to
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  this point where suddenly it's now crossed into the level from the subconscious
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  into the conscious and you see what's now happening and then it all becomes clear.
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  But it's not that choice of addiction.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Okay So if people are listening to this and they're saying well,
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  okay, but i'm running an equine assisted thing, you know Um, why do I need to
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  know this or I can see why I need to know this But i've got people showing up who
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  might be going through something less.
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  How on earth do I help them?
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  I want to talk about your work prior to horses first because, you know, we horse
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  people were very kind of, Oh, well, you've been in this for five to seven years.
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  Well, I've been in it for, you know, 5, 000 years, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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  You know?
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  So people like me, for example, I'll play devil's advocate, you know,
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  grew up in horse culture, no horses, never, never didn't know horses,
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  even though my parents actually were not horsey, but I had a horsey aunt.
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  So I was, you know, And it's been my life, you know, the whole, my whole life.
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  Even when I've done other careers, it's always been parallel.
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  So there's never been a time when I wasn't sort of a professional cause I came
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  out at it, not from the big money side.
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  So you then have to become a pro, you know, basically first in the sports side,
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  the training side, and then latterly in the therapeutic side or whatever.
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  Okay, fine.
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  So horse people.
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  naturally have a bit of an allergy when someone comes in and says, well, I've
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  been doing this quite recently because we know that that can also sometimes actually
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  lead to some, you know, bad judgments.
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  This is true.
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  So I want first for you to talk to us about your life with these types
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  of treatments, modalities prior to horses, then how did you get started?
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  Get into them with horses.
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  And then what can old timers like me, equine dinosaurs learn from some
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  stuff that you can bring in from completely outside of that world,
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  and then apply to horses that I could have mentorship for when, when someone
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  like this shows up in my practice.
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  So can you talk us back to where you began?
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  How do you know about all this stuff?
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  Christine Dickson: So.
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  Firstly, anybody that kind of, that knows me or has worked with me, I, I really
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  don't push myself as a horse expert or even a neckline coaching expert in this.
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  What I know is that what has worked, Or me, but nobody has to listen to me at all.
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  I'm just going to share what my experiences have been.
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  And again, like super humble in this area.
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  Like I would never put myself.
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  In the position of saying that I'm an expert in this, but I can
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  share what my experience has been.
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  So what's funny is this, this whole, this whole life journey began with the
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  idea of doing equine assisted coaching.
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  Well, that's not necessarily true.
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  It began with hypnotherapy.
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  I really, really wanted to be a a therapist.
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  That's what I wanted to be.
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  And when I moved When I moved from Vancouver, B.
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  C.
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  down to Los Angeles, and I was in a really dysfunctional relationship and, you know,
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  very living like paycheck to paycheck.
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  I was still raising my kids.
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  I, I had never gone to college, right?
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  So
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  going back to school meant that I was going to be in school for a very,
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  very, very long time before I would be licensed to be able to see clients.
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  And I just didn't see how I was going to be able to do that because I needed
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  to get out of this relationship and I needed something that I could.
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  Make money at and support my children and I wanted to really do something
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  that was going to help people so I saw an ad for It was the only college in
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  the country of hypnotherapy and it was in Los Angeles and it was a year and a
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  half program and I had a residency and it was very I was very on the up and up.
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  So I signed up for that because that would mean that within two years
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  I could actually be doing this.
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  And that changed my whole view of what I wanted to do because I loved that modality
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  so much because it was addressing that 88 percent which is the subconscious program.
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  And I had felt like I found my thing.
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  I found the thing that I love doing.
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  I love seeing the results of this.
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  But I was still in the middle of my own dysfunctional relationship and,
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  you know, one of the markers that makes a person more likely to be in a pathological
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  relationship or I should say a cluster of markers is one is a high, high level of
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  tolerance, a high, high level of empathy, really strong level of loyalty to a fault.
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  Like, you give loyalty to someone who does not give it back and
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  and those, those a combination of those things and that your
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  relationships mean the world to you, you know, and having those markers.
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  Those traits meant that I was always putting, I would always
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  put everything before myself.
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  So even though I got trained in this, even though I was so excited, even
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  though I was starting, I graduated, I was starting to get clients.
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  At the time, my ex-husband was starting as construction business and convinced
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  me that if I gave all that up.
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  And I became the operations manager and ran that company for
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  him, for us, they would make way more money than my hypnotherapy.
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  And therefore we could build this up over and it was like,
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  do this for a year or two.
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  And then you can go do your little hypnotherapy thing.
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  And you wouldn't have to worry about money and blah, blah, blah.
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  Well, I'm sure you can imagine how that went.
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  I was doing that for five years.
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  As our relationship disintegrated, it was how and I would, but I
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  was doing it for this carrot.
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  You know, there was the carrot and I just kept looking at that
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  carrot going against everything.
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  That was my, my intuition was telling me my, my soul was telling me and guess what?
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  2008 happened and.
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  Everything was lost.
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  Five years.
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  I did that job and it was everything that had been built up
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  was taken away in the recession.
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  We lost everything, everything.
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  And I went through a period where I told myself that this was punishment.
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  You know, that the universe was punishing me for being greedy because look, I
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  wanted this really abundant life that I could give stuff to my children
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  and help my children and all this.
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  And I was just being greedy.
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  You should just be happy with the fact that you have somewhere
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  to live and you have food.
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  And, and, and it was really hard.
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  Like I was really depressed.
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  And I had to slowly figure out who I was because I had given everything
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  to this relationship and this company and all of this and it all
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  was not in alignment with who I was.
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  It was not in integrity.
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  And now I didn't know who I was.
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  And I, I read at that point in time, I read The Artist's Way.
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  And in The Artist's Way, it talks about
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  journaling, writing morning pages, and having one day a
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  week that was your play day.
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  And when I was thinking about play, of course play kind of goes back to
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  your childhood, so I started using my childhood as kind of fertile
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  ground to try and remember who I was.
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  And try to rebuild myself and I would go to museums because they
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  were free and I was so broke.
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  I mean, this was in the middle of the recession.
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  I was so sober.
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  I was baking bread at home.
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  It, yeah, it was, I was very, very financially tapped.
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  So
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  yeah, this was a slow process.
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  Building myself back up again.
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  Rupert Isaacson: Where do the horses come into this?
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  Christine Dickson: So, when things were really bad, I would go to barns.
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  I would find public barns.
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  I didn't know, like, I always loved horses, but I would, I don't know, I
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  didn't understand why when it was Was
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  Rupert Isaacson: that, was that going back to childhood?
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  Was that the little girl who actually wanted horses?
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  Christine Dickson: Yes.
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  Yes.
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  And I would go to the barns and I would just walk up and down the breezeway
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  and feel better and feel this calming unraveling in my chest and feel like
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  I could breathe just being there
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  Rupert Isaacson: with the horse's heads looking over the boxes sort of
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  Christine Dickson: that's it.
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  Maybe I'd pet some noses a little bit, but you know, like I was.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And had you been exposed to horses at all as a kid?
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  Christine Dickson: Yes.
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  But not a lot like my, I was a horse crazy girl that never did get a
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  horse, you know, my grandmother, they couldn't afford to have a horse for me.
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  So they would take me to like, sometimes like a riding barn where you could, you
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  know, I got sent to like a horseback riding camp one, one summer for two
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  weeks that was borderline traumatic.
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  Yeah, like, you know, I always gravitated towards horses always.
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  So I had, I had experiences, but I never really, really had experiences.
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  So that led me to in, in 2007, I read the Tao of Equus
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  by Linda Kahanov.
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  And it was like, I suddenly understood why I was attracted
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  to horses at my darkest moments.
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  Rupert Isaacson: By the way, for listeners, if you don't know who
• 23:21
  she is, go to our Live Free Ride Free podcast and check out the
• 23:25
  interview with Linda Kahanov there.
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  It's really good.
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  Okay.
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  Sorry, back to you, Christine.
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  Christine Dickson: Well, she, reading that was like, Oh my God, I want to do this.
• 23:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Like, why, what did, what did the book say to you?
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  Christine Dickson: Because I have always been so connected to animals.
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  I've always felt like a deep connection to animals.
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  And especially horses, but I didn't have a lot of experience with
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  horses and I loved helping people.
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  I loved, I loved.
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  Learning to I love learning about why we do the things we do or
• 24:07
  how, you know, how can we heal?
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  How can we go from suffering and surviving into being a healthy and,
• 24:20
  and liberated thriving human and not just someone who now has, well, I,
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  I healed that pain, but, you know, I'm still kind of in the shadows.
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  So I saw that I could marry, I could marry my love for horses and my deep
• 24:45
  desire to learn because how, like, I didn't know anything about this.
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  I mean, how fun to learn this and to get that wisdom and then to practice
• 24:55
  something that is just, you know.
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  Like magical and there's an aspect of it that it's not clinical, right?
• 25:04
  Like you're partnering with a horse.
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  So you have no idea what's going to happen.
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  There's it's always, there's a newness to it and a trust in it and a spiritual
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  sense that I was very attracted to.
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  So that went on my vision board in 2007.
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  That went on my vision board and I always joke about it
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  because what's funny is, is that.
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  When I finally got to a place where that was possible because that was the guy
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  that was a gasoline in my tank Like it was always gonna be I wanted I even ran
• 25:41
  the the equine assisted program at the addiction Facility I worked at in Malibu
• 25:50
  Partnering with there was a therapist and the horse handler came in and
• 25:54
  then I was the one that ran the equine part program by, I brought
• 25:58
  the people to it, I participated in it, and it was my job to write the
• 26:04
  clinical notes for what took place.
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  And
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  Rupert Isaacson: this is sometime after 2008, right?
• 26:11
  Christine Dickson: Yeah, this is this, sorry, this is in 2018
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  to, yeah, for about two years.
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  But that was saying that was the gas in my gas tank that was on my vision board.
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  But when I finally got to the place where I could do that, really do that was.
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  The end of 2020, when I moved into my own ranch and had everything.
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  And I remember sitting on a chair, looking out at my horses and having this
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  breath and going, Oh, I'm finally here.
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  I can finally do it.
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  And then just having this realization that.
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  That's not it.
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  Like, it's a part of it for sure, but the vision of me just doing that,
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  like everything else falling away and like that was, it, it, it wasn't
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  it, but it was a really key piece.
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  And the horses brought me here a thousand percent.
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  And
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  I've had amazing experiences with them, with clients.
• 27:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Tell us about your current equestrian practice, and then I
• 27:21
  want to go right back to the beginning.
• 27:24
  Where you're born, how you arrive at knowing about these sorts of relationships
• 27:30
  why hypnotherapy, and then why from hypnotherapy to some of the other
• 27:36
  modalities that you do, which I think will be useful for our listeners.
• 27:41
  And then we're going to come catch up again back to the present.
• 27:45
  So tell us, just starting now, tell us about your equestrian practice right now.
• 27:50
  What is it?
• 27:51
  What do you do?
• 27:54
  Christine Dickson: So
• 27:57
  when people seem a bit stuck,
• 28:04
  I love partnering with the horses because
• 28:11
  people will be more genuine and have access.
• 28:17
  I mean, they're not trying to not be genuine, you know, no one's trying,
• 28:20
  but, but a lot of times are traumas based in other people, to be fair.
• 28:27
  So,
• 28:30
  accessing trust, developing trust with someone takes time.
• 28:35
  Trust in an animal can be immediate.
• 28:38
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 28:40
  Christine Dickson: So,
• 28:44
  taking somebody out, let's say like, One of the things that I've done that is, has
• 28:49
  been really beneficial has been going out.
• 28:51
  So I'll take a couple horses and I'll invite them to come into the arena
• 28:57
  and then I will close the arena.
• 29:00
  I'll put all kinds of toys and things out there for them to interact with.
• 29:05
  And then the client and I will sit, we'll sit outside the arena.
• 29:09
  And I give them a patent paper and I won't tell them the names of any horses
• 29:12
  or any information about any horses.
• 29:15
  And I asked them for about 1520 minutes to just observe the horses.
• 29:20
  And then I wanted them to write a little bio about each horse, like, how they
• 29:26
  interpret that horse, what they see.
• 29:30
  And what they feel that that horse's personality is all of this stuff.
• 29:35
  It's amazing because
• 29:40
  people will project so much.
• 29:43
  On to the horses, but by doing that by taking it outside of their themselves
• 29:51
  where they're feeling all the feelings and putting them outside of their
• 29:54
  body on to these forces, they gain clarity and perspective around what's
• 30:03
  actually going on in their life or how they're viewing things in their life.
• 30:07
  Rupert Isaacson: And then maybe the fact that they actually do project
• 30:10
  Christine Dickson: exactly.
• 30:12
  That's my mother in law.
• 30:13
  That's my old boss.
• 30:15
  That one thing, you know, that one just bosses everybody around, right?
• 30:20
  Where anybody that knows horses would say that one's just playing, right?
• 30:25
  Just got a playful spirit.
• 30:27
  That one's a bully, right?
• 30:29
  That one's, and it can be also projecting parts of themselves, right?
• 30:36
  I had one person who was really attracted.
• 30:41
  To my mule, who is like a Zen Buddha.
• 30:44
  He is, he's just, he loves people.
• 30:47
  He's a little man on the totem pole though.
• 30:49
  I have another horse that is very confident, swagger.
• 30:55
  He's the class clown.
• 30:57
  And this person was saying that he really felt a deep connection to my mule.
• 31:05
  But he wanted.
• 31:08
  To be the confident horse.
• 31:12
  And he, and he, he had this almost disgust towards the mule because
• 31:20
  he was low on the totem pole.
• 31:22
  He was a very empathetic and non confrontational being.
• 31:31
  And he, and, and this was a manifestation of, of how he saw himself
• 31:36
  as a man because he, he was that.
• 31:42
  Loving, empathetic, healing man in the world that values the swagger
• 31:49
  and the confidence and felt, and felt like that was what he needed to
• 31:57
  cultivate and really had some self loathing around that he wasn't that.
• 32:05
  Rupert Isaacson: When you point out to someone, you say, well, that
• 32:07
  horse is being a bully, and you say, well, actually, they're just playing.
• 32:10
  At some point, you point that out.
• 32:12
  Perhaps.
• 32:13
  Do those people then get a realisation, Oh shit, I'm projecting.
• 32:19
  Fuck, I kind of do this in my day to day life.
• 32:24
  Oh.
• 32:25
  Absolutely.
• 32:26
  Do they get that clarity?
• 32:27
  Yes.
• 32:28
  Christine Dickson: Yes.
• 32:29
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, that's so interesting because I, I think that that
• 32:32
  clarity is almost impossible to get human to human because we, you know, we'll,
• 32:37
  we'll die on the hill of our ego, right?
• 32:39
  And, and we'll do that because our ego is convinced that that's
• 32:44
  what is necessary for survival.
• 32:46
  I think we come by it honestly, otherwise we wouldn't all do it.
• 32:49
  It surprises me, frankly, to hear that if you were to point that
• 32:53
  out, that Someone would accept.
• 32:55
  Oh gosh.
• 32:55
  I guess I am I do project.
• 32:58
  Because then that's you a human pointing it out So therefore, you know, you're
• 33:01
  now the adversary and the human, you know, how do you dance that dance?
• 33:07
  Christine Dickson: Well, you certainly don't blurt it out, right?
• 33:09
  You don't hit him over the head with it.
• 33:12
  I I want to delve deep into first What it is they're seeing and, and
• 33:18
  let them use their, their own tools to kind of like really flesh it out.
• 33:25
  And then I ask questions, you know, I ask them, I will ask them to,
• 33:28
  do you want me to tell you the way that these horses present here?
• 33:37
  You know, not like this is the right answer and that's the wrong answer,
• 33:40
  but do you want me to tell you the way?
• 33:42
  How they are seen here at the ranch.
• 33:48
  So this guy, he's seen as a clown, right?
• 33:52
  He's always looking for play and he's confident and he's, he doesn't have
• 34:00
  all the anxiety that some of the horses who have had other experiences with
• 34:04
  humans can have he's healthier mentally.
• 34:07
  You know, like, and, and I have yet to meet somebody that isn't
• 34:14
  fascinated and excited about.
• 34:19
  Looking at the differences between their their perception and another
• 34:26
  perception of What you're seeing
• 34:32
  Rupert Isaacson: and the people that are coming are they I know
• 34:35
  you work a lot with addiction
• 34:38
  Is that frequently what's brought them through the ranch gate or is it
• 34:43
  less that now is it more other things?
• 34:46
  Christine Dickson: You know, it's less the addiction now.
• 34:48
  It's more the The people who have experienced the other side, which
• 34:56
  is the person who has lived with the addict, or the person who has lived
• 35:00
  with the person with a pathological personality disorder or growing up
• 35:06
  with them or chosen as partners.
• 35:08
  Because there's a lot of healing that needs to happen.
• 35:13
  A lot of subconscious programming and, and, you know, there's,
• 35:24
  I think that there's an aspect that,
• 35:31
  how do I say this?
• 35:32
  So there's been a lot of emphasis on helping the person who has low self esteem
• 35:41
  and low and a low power level or how you want to describe it in relationships,
• 35:46
  the, the personal that's more.
• 35:48
  Needs to be brought up there.
• 35:51
  You know, that's been like so much, the focus of self help books and,
• 35:57
  and things is the person who needs to be brought up but not a lot of
• 36:01
  talk about the grandiosity and the grandiose that needs to be brought down.
• 36:09
  And many times when you're bringing someone up, that's not something that
• 36:16
  that person's used to, so they don't have a feel for it, but it's, it's And
• 36:20
  when they're trying to quote, unquote, fight for themselves or set boundaries
• 36:25
  or do these things, they, without a lot of guidance, they can be not very good at
• 36:32
  that and then they can overcompensate and then they can start to become the bully.
• 36:40
  Using their pain as justification,
• 36:47
  but that's not what they want to do.
• 36:49
  It's just that they don't have the framework to be able to have balance
• 36:55
  and, and have true, a true place of grounding to come from and not feel
• 37:02
  like everything is a power fight.
• 37:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Got it.
• 37:07
  Are you,
• 37:09
  are you using a particular set of modalities in the equine?
• 37:13
  I know you are on the non equine.
• 37:14
  I'm gonna keep promising to go back to these.
• 37:17
  We're going to are you using something like egal National natural life
• 37:21
  manship, blah, or are you, are you sort of going with your gut here based
• 37:25
  on the work that you did pre equine, if you like, now brought to equine?
• 37:30
  Is that more describing what you're doing?
• 37:34
  Christine Dickson: Yes, yes.
• 37:36
  It's more of partnering with the horse.
• 37:39
  And allowing and, and just really kind of setting things up.
• 37:43
  I,
• 37:48
  I just have a different view, not a different view.
• 37:51
  Cause a lot of people have the same view.
• 37:53
  My view is that the horses have a ton of wisdom that I don't really have to
• 37:58
  have a lot of technical framework for them to be able to do what they do.
• 38:05
  I've taken a ton of workshops, read a ton of books.
• 38:09
  Had, you know, a few years of active work in this kind of on the job training,
• 38:16
  they did do something similar to, like, any gala, you know, where the idea
• 38:21
  was, you know, you bring the group in, you divide the people up into groups.
• 38:26
  You've got 4 loose horses in the arena.
• 38:29
  We have set up a thing in the middle, a circle, you've got
• 38:32
  to get that horse in the circle without, you know, how do you do it?
• 38:38
  That was kind of, you know, so it was kind of teaching people how
• 38:43
  to work as teams and and stuff like that, but it wasn't always.
• 38:48
  Utilizing in that scenario, the wisdom of the horses and allowing the horses
• 38:55
  to be as involved in the process.
• 38:58
  And what I've found is in the way that I, I partner with them,
• 39:07
  they don't need a lot of direction.
• 39:10
  Rupert Isaacson: They being the client,
• 39:12
  Christine Dickson: meaning the horses.
• 39:13
  Okay.
• 39:14
  I just, you know, and, and I do have to have a framework
• 39:17
  to set things up, obviously.
• 39:18
  And I have to have an idea of what I'm, I'm trying to get, but I
• 39:23
  don't know what is going to happen.
• 39:26
  You asked me a question about about how people then have these moments
• 39:31
  of realizing that they're projecting.
• 39:35
  And I had a woman come out really, really, I really liked her.
• 39:40
  She was really cool.
• 39:41
  And she wanted to work with the horses.
• 39:44
  With me and
• 39:48
  she was very intuitive, very smart
• 39:53
  and I just, you know, there is, you have to kind of, I think if you have
• 39:58
  too much, if I have too much of a, I want to do these things, right?
• 40:03
  A framework, then I'm not going to be as in the moment to, to sense and follow
• 40:10
  my intuition about what the next step should be because I'm going to have
• 40:15
  my checklist that I gotta get done.
• 40:18
  And we started off with the whole.
• 40:22
  In the arena writing about what you think about each horse,
• 40:24
  and she was really spot on.
• 40:26
  She was very good at that.
• 40:28
  And then we ended with, I had her go into a 24 by 24, like, little paddock
• 40:36
  stall with my mule and a brush.
• 40:40
  And I just said, just try this.
• 40:44
  I want you to brush him, but I want you to I want you to be in connection with him.
• 40:51
  I want you to be telling him about what you're doing and talk to him.
• 40:56
  Talk to him as though he can understand you and you can share with him anything,
• 41:04
  anything you're thinking or feeling,
• 41:08
  anything that you want him to get out of this.
• 41:12
  And I just left her there and I went far enough away where I, she knew I
• 41:15
  couldn't hear anything, but that I could still kind of see what was happening.
• 41:20
  And she did that for like 15, 20 minutes.
• 41:25
  And then that ended and we came back into my office
• 41:31
  and she was, she seemed like she was smiling.
• 41:35
  She was happy.
• 41:36
  And so we, we talked about a few things.
• 41:40
  And then I asked her at the end,
• 41:46
  what is your biggest takeaway from today
• 41:50
  and what she said, like, just blew me away because I wasn't expecting it.
• 41:55
  She hadn't shared any of this.
• 41:56
  And she said, you know, I've been in therapy for 30 years.
• 42:04
  And for 30 years, I've had therapists telling me that I take everything
• 42:09
  personally, and then I have to stop, you know, the, the ideas to stop trying
• 42:19
  to see myself through other people's eyes.
• 42:22
  I'm always worried about what other people think of me.
• 42:25
  I'm always everything I do is to create this image, you
• 42:28
  know, and then I'm devastated.
• 42:30
  If I think somebody thinks poorly of me and I, and they're like, just
• 42:34
  be in your body, be in your body.
• 42:37
  And she said that having that time with him and observing him that day
• 42:44
  and talking to him about this is that what she realizes that even though
• 42:48
  he was low man on the totem pole, he didn't care because he was fully being
• 42:57
  himself and that was who he was and there was nothing right or wrong about it.
• 43:04
  It just was.
• 43:06
  It was right because that was him being fully himself and he did not care.
• 43:11
  He had no awareness at all.
• 43:14
  He was happy and she finally understood what those therapists
• 43:22
  were trying to say to her because she saw it exemplified in him.
• 43:32
  And it's like all of that teaching just finally all lined up inside
• 43:36
  her psyche and she got it.
• 43:39
  Rupert Isaacson: It's very interesting.
• 43:40
  You know, I was having a rather similar conversation with someone today.
• 43:43
  We were working with my herd and working on classical dressage stuff.
• 43:48
  But as you probably know, we do that with a view to creating horses that can also
• 43:53
  work with people to make them feel better.
• 43:55
  And
• 43:56
  this person correctly pointed out that the horse that had been the most
• 44:01
  fiery under saddle in a good way was now was, was low on the totem pole.
• 44:09
  And I said, it's true, but he didn't used to be.
• 44:12
  He used to be top dog and he took a backseat 18 months ago.
• 44:19
  And that was who he was then.
• 44:23
  But there was a certain amount of stress involved in that for him.
• 44:26
  He had to kind of be in control because to be top dog is actually not
• 44:31
  just about getting the food first.
• 44:32
  It's about, you're supposed to be vigilant.
• 44:34
  You're the one who has to make sure all the other horses are okay, basically.
• 44:39
  And Now, he's stepped down from that role as another horse has come,
• 44:43
  younger horse has come into that role.
• 44:46
  And as you say, he doesn't care.
• 44:50
  He, there's no sense of despair.
• 44:52
  That, Oh my God, I used to be, you know, the top dog and now I'm, you
• 44:55
  know, not and under saddle, he's just the same old, Hey, Hey, Hey.
• 44:59
  And then when he gets in the, in the field or in the pen,
• 45:02
  he's like, yeah, I'm, I'm here.
• 45:03
  That's fine.
• 45:04
  It's fine.
• 45:05
  And would that we could now looked at it myself and kind of went, gosh,
• 45:10
  you know, that's beyond wisdom.
• 45:12
  That's, that's happiness because that's just to be okay where you are.
• 45:15
  You know, we could wish for such peace.
• 45:18
  It's peaceful, I think.
• 45:20
  Okay.
• 45:21
  You came to Horses Latish and again, I keep promising listeners, please hang
• 45:27
  with me because we are going to go into Christine's story of how she got
• 45:31
  here, which you kind of need to hear But when you come into Horses Latish,
• 45:36
  you've got to have mentors, right?
• 45:37
  So even though so I'm always when people say oh Roo, you know,
• 45:42
  why should I learn from you?
• 45:43
  I say well because actually I've got good mentors So if you're if you're
• 45:46
  learning from me, you're actually learning from you know, this person
• 45:48
  and this person and this person said my You know, say it's in the dressage
• 45:51
  thing, then that would be the Valenza family in Portugal, who I know you've
• 45:55
  gone out to visit and seen the amazing stuff they do and blah, blah, blah.
• 45:59
  Who are your mentors?
• 46:00
  Who brought you to your horse knowledge that you can offer your
• 46:04
  horses to people, your herd to people?
• 46:08
  Christine Dickson: I so I, as I said, I started reading the Tao of Equus.
• 46:12
  I just devoured everything.
• 46:14
  Rupert Isaacson: Right.
• 46:14
  But that doesn't tell you how to keep horses.
• 46:16
  That tells you what you'd like to do with horses, but that doesn't tell you how.
• 46:20
  Right.
• 46:20
  Yeah.
• 46:21
  Christine Dickson: Yeah.
• 46:21
  So is that what you're asking about?
• 46:23
  How
• 46:23
  Rupert Isaacson: did you learn your horse skills?
• 46:24
  Christine Dickson: Oh yeah.
• 46:25
  Okay.
• 46:25
  So it's kind of a funny story.
• 46:29
  Okay.
• 46:30
  So in 2016 Before everything for me really took off,
• 46:37
  I was, I had read a book called You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero, and what's
• 46:44
  funny is that my ego at the time, because I had read all of these books, you
• 46:49
  know, I, I was the shelf help master.
• 46:53
  And all of the really heady ones, all the Eckhart Tolles, and the Gary Zukausky of
• 46:58
  the soul, and all these very deep books.
• 47:01
  And then here's this book, You Are a Badass by Jensen Sharer that I'm listening
• 47:06
  to on Audible, and she's such a dork.
• 47:10
  She's so, has, and, and self proclaimed, like, she has these jokes
• 47:16
  that are like, dad jokes through it.
• 47:19
  She's talk everything she's talking about are things like I already
• 47:22
  know that I remember being so like arrogant in the beginning of listening
• 47:26
  to this book I was like, this is like Self help 101 for people, you
• 47:31
  know, I I already know this stuff
• 47:36
  So silly the thing about it being delivered in such a fun silly, which you
• 47:43
  might identify with light hearted Huh?
• 47:48
  Not you.
• 47:48
  Yeah.
• 47:49
  Not, not at all.
• 47:50
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 47:51
  Christine Dickson: Right.
• 47:52
  Right.
• 47:52
  Fun, silly, lighthearted, jokey, dorky way.
• 47:57
  It made it accessible to me.
• 48:01
  Suddenly this was something I wasn't just like intellectually pondering and,
• 48:07
  and, you know, from this existential place, this was someone that was
• 48:12
  showing how she did these things and, and, and took in these, these
• 48:16
  teachings and applied them to her life.
• 48:19
  In a really clumsy and not perfect way.
• 48:23
  And it just made it accessible to me.
• 48:25
  So, listening to that book, in the middle of listening to that
• 48:29
  book, it's all about taking action.
• 48:30
  What action are you taking?
• 48:32
  I want to work with horses, but I don't have the money.
• 48:35
  I don't have any horses.
• 48:37
  I don't have any access to horses.
• 48:39
  What, what can I do?
• 48:41
  Like, what can I do?
• 48:42
  So I decided to get in the car.
• 48:44
  And take the two hour, two and a half hour drive up to flag is
• 48:49
  up farms, which is Monty Roberts place, which was up the coast.
• 48:54
  I know that his farm is open to people visiting and it's a beautiful drive.
• 48:59
  And I was like, I'm just going to do that.
• 49:00
  So I did, I went up there, I mean, walked around again, petting some noses.
• 49:06
  And I came back and that night
• 49:12
  I did a, I co produced a documentary with friends.
• 49:17
  Called American street kid, which is about homeless youth in the U.
• 49:20
  S.
• 49:22
  And we were, we had a nonprofit that came out of that called spare some change.
• 49:31
  And our nonprofit was being featured at a at like a band showcase downtown.
• 49:37
  So we were going to be the nonprofit.
• 49:41
  In the entryway with our stuff and our little table and it was
• 49:44
  me and my friend who was one of the producers michelle kaufer?
• 49:48
  So Michelle and I were sitting at the table that night.
• 49:51
  She's like, hey, what did you what'd you do today?
• 49:53
  I said, well, you know, I took this drive up to see these horses because
• 49:57
  you know I really want to get involved in this equine assisted coaching and
• 50:01
  stuff and I don't know how, you know I don't know how that's gonna happen.
• 50:06
  And she's like, wait a minute.
• 50:08
  I know somebody that I think I know somebody that does that
• 50:13
  Well, that's somebody That she thought she knew was Katie Nelligan
• 50:20
  now, I don't know if you've ever heard of Katie Nelligan, but
• 50:23
  she's been on works podcast.
• 50:25
  She, the reason Michelle knew her is because Katie Nelligan used to work
• 50:30
  in marketing at Lionsgate films.
• 50:33
  Katie Nilligan had left Lionsgate to start doing equine assisted
• 50:41
  therapy, learning, coaching.
• 50:43
  And so Michelle hooks me up with Katie.
• 50:48
  Katie is work, her, her whole setup is 25 minutes from my house.
• 50:54
  We decide to meet.
• 50:56
  I took some workshops with Katie.
• 50:59
  Katie introduced me to Esther Bernstein, who runs Sapphire Sanctuary at the time.
• 51:06
  And so I started volunteering because I was like, I need
• 51:10
  to immerse myself in horses.
• 51:11
  I don't know anything about body language of horses.
• 51:14
  I don't know anything about the care of horses.
• 51:17
  So I volunteered at Sapphire fast forward.
• 51:25
  I don't know, eight months and the property that Sapphire was
• 51:30
  running out of is in foreclosure.
• 51:33
  All the horses need to go.
• 51:35
  And I adopt one of the horses.
• 51:38
  Sapphire took their, they just ran their operation out of this property.
• 51:43
  They didn't own it, so they just moved their operation, but I took on one of
• 51:48
  the horses that the property had owned.
• 51:51
  Fun fact, that property was so depressing.
• 51:57
  It had people living out of the cars on it.
• 52:00
  It was, it was just a mess for sad, sad horses.
• 52:07
  That's the property I live in now.
• 52:13
  That property, if you had told me in 2016 that I would live there one day,
• 52:19
  I would ask how much you hate me.
• 52:22
  Because, there was the joke was there's not enough sage in the world.
• 52:27
  To clear the energy out of that place, but the land is you people talk about
• 52:33
  they come here and they feel it.
• 52:35
  They feel there's a spiritual aspect to this little tiny corner that I'm in.
• 52:40
  And so when it got foreclosed on a construction company took
• 52:44
  it, they gutted everything.
• 52:46
  They cleaned everything out and eventually.
• 52:52
  Amazingly enough, here I am,
• 52:56
  but I learned about horse care through Esta.
• 53:00
  She was my mentor and then over time I got other mentors and learned from more people
• 53:06
  and more people found work, Schiller.
• 53:10
  And just that's why I said, like, I can't ever imagine.
• 53:13
  I don't think if I'm in horses for 30 more years that I'll
• 53:16
  ever consider myself an expert.
• 53:19
  In horses because it's so humbling like no matter how much I feel like I
• 53:25
  learn there is a sea of knowledge that
• 53:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, and that's that's all of us, you
• 53:33
  know that there's a really good.
• 53:35
  Quote from the great 18th century classical dressage master francois He
• 53:43
  wrote what Which is basically if you do dressage today, that's my What you're
• 53:51
  trying to do and he was the keeper of the royal stables for the French king in the
• 53:56
  early 18th century And he was approached by a nobleman to train his son And he said
• 54:03
  the nobleman said to La Guernière, you know, just you know, turn him into a good
• 54:08
  horseman He doesn't have to be like, you know, a total equier as you'd say like a
• 54:12
  total expert he just you know, they can sort of show the horse where to put his
• 54:16
  feet, you know and La Guernière said ah Yeah, the very same thing I myself have
• 54:23
  been trying to do this past 60 years.
• 54:28
  I love it.
• 54:30
  So no, we're all, you know, constant beginners.
• 54:33
  All right, here you are now on this amazing What do you call it?
• 54:40
  Christine Dickson: Raven sun ranch,
• 54:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Raven sun ranch.
• 54:42
  And it's in,
• 54:44
  Christine Dickson: it's in Lakeview Terrace, California.
• 54:46
  So I'm kind of, you know, nobody knows where Lakeview
• 54:48
  terraces, but Burbank is not far.
• 54:51
  So it's in the East Valley in the
• 54:53
  Rupert Isaacson: so it's sort of in those, that hilly bit that isn't the
• 54:55
  Hollywood Hills, but it isn't the valley, but sort of is that bit where
• 55:00
  they do actually quite a lot of filming.
• 55:03
  Christine Dickson: Actually, Patrick Swayze, his place used
• 55:05
  to be a couple blocks away.
• 55:06
  I
• 55:06
  Rupert Isaacson: sort of know a little bit where you're talking about.
• 55:09
  It's a sort of a little hidden gem there.
• 55:11
  Okay.
• 55:13
  You also mentioned this film, American Street Kid, which I've just been
• 55:16
  looking up as you've been talking.
• 55:18
  Impressive.
• 55:21
  You don't make a film like that, get involved in a project like that
• 55:26
  without some sort of life experience.
• 55:29
  So now I want to dial the right number.
• 55:31
  Listeners right back.
• 55:33
  Okay.
• 55:33
  Now I want the buyer.
• 55:35
  Where are you born?
• 55:37
  You know, you talked about, oh, I was in this shitty relationship and you
• 55:40
  know, I now I sort of, I'm a client with horses walking up and down breezeways
• 55:45
  of barns to feel better, which is a great thing for people like us to hear
• 55:48
  because I think we can forget sometimes as practitioners of the equine stuff that
• 55:53
  simply being around the horses is healing.
• 55:57
  You know, we all know this of course, but we're, you know, we, we get
• 56:01
  for the best of reasons, you know.
• 56:03
  Tied up with trying to provide the service that we provide and sometimes
• 56:05
  we forget actually it's just being there is, you know, sometimes enough
• 56:10
  Letting the horses do their thing just by being who they are But okay that shitty
• 56:17
  relationship that you're talking about.
• 56:21
  I think you're talking about how people survive relationships I know that you're
• 56:31
  being rather modest about some of the shit you've had to go through in order to reach
• 56:37
  the point where you can help other people going through their shit, basically.
• 56:41
  Can you just talk through whatever you feel to talk through that helped?
• 56:46
  Because, again, a lot of us that are coming into this equine assisted world,
• 56:52
  we're coming from vastly different backgrounds, and, of course, you can't
• 56:55
  be a perfect person Human being alive on planet Earth for more than a certain
• 56:58
  amount of time without going through some trauma It's just part and parcel of
• 57:02
  the experience of being on the planet.
• 57:04
  However
• 57:07
  Certain types can be more acute than others.
• 57:09
  So talk us through Where you begin and then bring us up to now and then why
• 57:16
  hypnotherapy and then I we haven't touched at all on the eye stuff and That listeners
• 57:23
  is how I really connected with Christine She did her eye thing which he's going
• 57:28
  to tell us about with me and it healed Some stuff in me that needed healing.
• 57:37
  Bring us please from where you start to where you end Up to
• 57:40
  now through all that, please.
• 57:42
  And then perhaps how it now informs what you do with the horses.
• 57:50
  Christine Dickson: Sure.
• 57:50
  I'll try to, I'll try not to turn this into a boring recount of my childhood.
• 57:57
  Like, we'll hit on the highlights.
• 58:00
  That's the highlight reel.
• 58:02
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 58:03
  Christine Dickson: Where I was born was in Cleveland, Ohio, but that's just
• 58:08
  my mom was a hippie and my father was just getting out of the Vietnam war.
• 58:16
  But there's a lot of addiction, a lot of alcoholism in my family
• 58:21
  and what I've learned as an adult.
• 58:25
  There was a lot more mental health issues.
• 58:28
  Then I realized because that was my normal.
• 58:32
  I didn't have anything to compare my growing up to a quote,
• 58:39
  unquote, healthy growing up.
• 58:40
  So, this has been an ongoing discovery for myself, but my mother just was
• 58:47
  not healthy enough to raise a child.
• 58:51
  So my grandmother through court order took me from her when I was 2 and a half
• 58:58
  due to neglect.
• 59:00
  And other issues.
• 59:01
  So
• 59:04
  I, you know, I kind of grew up really knowing what it's like to feel like you
• 59:13
  don't really have a place of belonging.
• 59:15
  My grandmother did her best and she was wonderful.
• 59:19
  I am grateful to her every day, but you know, I wanted to be in a family
• 59:23
  with other kids and siblings and young parents who did fun things and.
• 59:30
  I did get some of that by going to my aunts in summers and, and holidays, but
• 59:38
  I think that there was also, there was a, a, a fear of the adults in my life of what
• 59:46
  I turn out to be like my mother, because as I grew up my mother's mental health
• 59:52
  issues and her manipulation and violence.
• 59:57
  And chaos just grew
• 1:00:02
  and she kept having children.
• 1:00:06
  There's five of us with five different fathers.
• 1:00:10
  So it was, you know, always managing the train wreck that my mother was creating.
• 1:00:17
  So
• 1:00:20
  fast forward to when I was in, I lived with my aunt.
• 1:00:28
  In my freshman year and halfway into my sophomore year and you know, to, to
• 1:00:35
  protect people in my family, I won't go into exactly what happened, but there
• 1:00:45
  was a series of events that happened and lies told that cast me into.
• 1:00:55
  A view of looking like I was, you know, you're just like your mother.
• 1:00:59
  I got thrown out of their house ended up at my grandmother's.
• 1:01:04
  My mother at the same time found herself homeless and was living at my
• 1:01:10
  grandmother's pregnant with my sister, Katie, and with my young sister, Kimmy.
• 1:01:18
  Being about I guess she was probably like five or six and so
• 1:01:23
  the idea was I was gonna live with my mother So I get moved in with my
• 1:01:28
  mother and I'll just fast forward to After my sister was born a few months
• 1:01:34
  later My mother was itching to get back to the bar one of the drinking buddy
• 1:01:40
  when I didn't want to go alone So she would leave my little sisters with
• 1:01:44
  the neighbor and take me to biker bars When I was 15, 16, around that age and
• 1:01:58
  I mean, when I talk about this stuff, I have to tell you, it's like I'm
• 1:02:03
  talking about a movie I saw because it's so bizarre to me how much
• 1:02:11
  happened in such a small period of time and how absolutely insane it was.
• 1:02:16
  You know, by bringing me to these biker bars.
• 1:02:20
  I mean, I had guns put in my face, I was in high speed chases I was in vans with
• 1:02:27
  strange men, like, my mother would leave me with strange men, the fact that nothing
• 1:02:32
  terrible happened to me is, I swear I have guardian angels watching over me
• 1:02:38
  because the, the situations I was put in,
• 1:02:44
  and that the fact that that stuff didn't happen is, is just insane.
• 1:02:48
  But.
• 1:02:50
  When you have a young teenager who is living in this chaos, who is
• 1:02:58
  defiant, I was very defiant, I was very angry about a lot of things.
• 1:03:03
  And I never had a father, and I meet this older man who thinks I am just
• 1:03:09
  the best thing since sliced bread.
• 1:03:12
  And takes me under his wing, and I fell madly in love with him.
• 1:03:18
  I was 16, he was 34.
• 1:03:23
  And,
• 1:03:26
  you know, I haven't shared this before, but
• 1:03:33
  the first time I ever did a drug other than smoking weed, which I hated because
• 1:03:43
  it just made me paranoid I didn't get the attraction was with my mother my
• 1:03:49
  mother and the group of people that she associated with were into snorting meth.
• 1:03:59
  And so that was given to me when I was about, I think I was 16 is around
• 1:04:06
  the time I met my kid's dad and so
• 1:04:12
  we, I would go off to weekends with him and we would do math
• 1:04:19
  and I just was enamored with it was followed him off the ends of the earth.
• 1:04:25
  Like, he was.
• 1:04:29
  My God in a way, you know, he was everything and he was in the fact that
• 1:04:32
  he was scary on some really primitive level Because I felt so hurt by the
• 1:04:39
  rejection of my family and the people that I loved and the position I was in
• 1:04:43
  that I think on some level the scariness of him made me feel safe, you know,
• 1:04:49
  because he was strong and Nobody was going to hurt me if I was with him
• 1:04:58
  and one day when we had been away we would go on these like drives
• 1:05:03
  and I never knew what he was doing.
• 1:05:05
  You know, I, we get a hotel somewhere, I'd be left at the hotel.
• 1:05:09
  He would go visit people or do whatever he did, or I'd sit in the
• 1:05:12
  car outside of people's houses.
• 1:05:15
  We're driving back.
• 1:05:17
  He's crashing next to me.
• 1:05:20
  So he's like nodding off.
• 1:05:22
  I was doing the driving, but I didn't have a driver's license.
• 1:05:25
  And we got pulled over and yeah, turns out there was five
• 1:05:32
  pounds of meth in the trunk.
• 1:05:35
  And that caused a complete
• 1:05:43
  jumping of tracks for my life.
• 1:05:48
  I was a juvenile, so I went to juvenile hall and I didn't even know I was there.
• 1:05:53
  I didn't know there was anything in it.
• 1:05:54
  I didn't know why I thought the reason I was held was because when my mother
• 1:05:58
  was mad at me, she had reported me as a runaway because she didn't want
• 1:06:01
  me to go away with him for a weekend.
• 1:06:04
  And so she never took that off.
• 1:06:06
  So I thought I was being arrested because.
• 1:06:09
  I was still on the books as a runaway.
• 1:06:12
  When I figured this out,
• 1:06:16
  I didn't know what to think.
• 1:06:18
  I was more dependent on him now because this was his world, you know, he
• 1:06:21
  was, he had been arrested a million times before and I needed him now
• 1:06:26
  to help me and it kind of forged me.
• 1:06:31
  In this relationship and when the government was going to move to certify
• 1:06:37
  me as an adult we went on the run
• 1:06:42
  and I lived for four and a half years under aliases and moving and.
• 1:06:47
  I had two kids under aliases and during that time, he became addicted
• 1:06:54
  to drugs and became more and more terrifying and abusive and I felt I
• 1:06:59
  had nowhere to go because if I went home, I would be arrested and I, my
• 1:07:04
  family didn't either have the money or the knowledge of how to navigate
• 1:07:11
  the judicial system in this country.
• 1:07:14
  And.
• 1:07:17
  The, and during this time, he was actually going back and showing up for
• 1:07:22
  his cases because he, the search was, it was like an illegal search and seizure.
• 1:07:27
  So he was, he ended up winning the case after 4 and a half years
• 1:07:31
  on the fact that they didn't have a warrant to search the car.
• 1:07:34
  They didn't have, they did a lot of things because they knew who he was.
• 1:07:37
  So, you know, my family found out, no, I'm, I'm jumping.
• 1:07:44
  So
• 1:07:47
  he wins the case.
• 1:07:50
  I had spent from 18 to 22 and a half with, you know, no friends, no, but like, no
• 1:08:02
  life just on hold waiting and then living with this really unpredictable human.
• 1:08:11
  And so I was so excited to move home and so we did I kind of took him
• 1:08:16
  driving and streaming because I was, you know, Moving back, I was going
• 1:08:19
  to have a life and what we didn't know was that five pounds of meth in
• 1:08:24
  the trunk is also a federal offense.
• 1:08:28
  So, even though he had won a state case, the feds had charged him in a sealed
• 1:08:35
  indictment, which meant that when we moved back, we were being surveilled
• 1:08:40
  for a year, followed in airplanes and helicopters and all kinds of crazy
• 1:08:45
  stuff, phones tapped, all of that.
• 1:08:48
  And one day there was a knock on the door and it was the police.
• 1:08:54
  And all of a sudden the agents came out from the woods, they came out
• 1:08:59
  from behind the barn, they came out from everywhere, and I was on the 11
• 1:09:06
  o'clock news, that's how my family knew, so it was a huge bust, huge bust,
• 1:09:15
  Rupert Isaacson: and What were they busting you for at that point?
• 1:09:17
  Because the 5 pounds of meth was years before.
• 1:09:20
  Christine Dickson: Well, it was still that char, so here's, yeah, there's
• 1:09:24
  so much to the story that when I try to whittle it down I can miss bits.
• 1:09:29
  Key pieces.
• 1:09:30
  So because the 5 pounds of meth was also a federal offense.
• 1:09:35
  It's like new charges, even though he won state, those state charges.
• 1:09:40
  Now he's facing the same.
• 1:09:41
  We're both facing the same charges.
• 1:09:44
  Same exact crime, but now from a federal level, but they had also surveilled
• 1:09:48
  him and the during those 4 and a half years that we were living on the run,
• 1:09:53
  he was actually manufacturing meth.
• 1:09:56
  Rupert Isaacson: I see.
• 1:09:56
  Christine Dickson: In order to finance us to live.
• 1:10:00
  And he had friends and people he knew that were working, turned against him because
• 1:10:05
  they had got caught for other things.
• 1:10:06
  So.
• 1:10:08
  There was informants.
• 1:10:09
  This
• 1:10:09
  Rupert Isaacson: is breaking bad, basically.
• 1:10:11
  Christine Dickson: Yes.
• 1:10:12
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:10:12
  Yeah.
• 1:10:12
  Yeah.
• 1:10:14
  Christine Dickson: And I think he became addicted because when you,
• 1:10:17
  when you make meth in its liquid form, when you're making it it
• 1:10:20
  will go right through the skin.
• 1:10:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:10:22
  Christine Dickson: And because he didn't wear gloves, he was constantly getting it
• 1:10:26
  and then he, and then would want more than start doing, you know, it was a process.
• 1:10:31
  So, but things were, even though we had moved back and even though he was.
• 1:10:38
  Yeah, it was, it was really bad.
• 1:10:40
  So I remember they drove us down.
• 1:10:46
  I got driven down to the Philadelphia they call it pick it's it's the
• 1:10:50
  county jail and there were five wards and 80 women on a ward.
• 1:10:56
  And I,
• 1:10:59
  everyone, all the women in there thought I was in there for DUI, cause they had
• 1:11:03
  no idea why this thing was happening.
• 1:11:06
  You know, 23 year old girl that looks like she's 15 is doing in jail.
• 1:11:12
  And then they saw the news.
• 1:11:13
  And when I woke up, I remember the first day waking up in there.
• 1:11:18
  And the craziest thing was that other than my children who were
• 1:11:24
  staying with friends, other than that, I felt like I had been saved.
• 1:11:32
  Like the thought was, it's finally over.
• 1:11:38
  Because I didn't think I would ever be able to leave him.
• 1:11:41
  I don't know how I would ever get away.
• 1:11:44
  He was terrified.
• 1:11:46
  And he, you know, there was lots of threats.
• 1:11:51
  So I was free.
• 1:11:55
  I was in jail and I was free.
• 1:11:59
  And so it took 15 months.
• 1:12:03
  I had to plead guilty to 20 something felonies,
• 1:12:09
  but he agreed to plead guilty to get me out.
• 1:12:12
  Rupert Isaacson: So he did the decent thing.
• 1:12:14
  Christine Dickson: Absolutely.
• 1:12:17
  He pled guilty.
• 1:12:19
  Got 10 years to get me out and back to our children.
• 1:12:26
  Yes, he did.
• 1:12:26
  Rupert Isaacson: But ultimately, despite the threats, despite all that, when Well,
• 1:12:31
  Christine Dickson: that's the thing
• 1:12:32
  Rupert Isaacson: Bush came to shove, he
• 1:12:35
  Christine Dickson: That's the thing, Rupert
• 1:12:36
  Rupert Isaacson: Interesting
• 1:12:37
  Christine Dickson: That's it, that this is what makes people stay
• 1:12:42
  in relationships sometimes too, is because people aren't all bad.
• 1:12:48
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, sure.
• 1:12:49
  Christine Dickson: Right?
• 1:12:50
  So we cling on to these aspects.
• 1:12:54
  these crumbs or these pieces that we go, well, these don't add up.
• 1:12:58
  Like this is a person, this is a stand up person, right?
• 1:13:04
  But yet they're my biggest threat.
• 1:13:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Did he subsequently reverse and then
• 1:13:12
  come and become a threat again?
• 1:13:14
  Or from that point on, was he always kind of on your side?
• 1:13:23
  Christine Dickson: He was,
• 1:13:27
  he wanted to maintain control over me.
• 1:13:30
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:13:32
  Christine Dickson: From jail through.
• 1:13:34
  Rupert Isaacson: So it wasn't completely clean.
• 1:13:37
  Christine Dickson: So.
• 1:13:38
  Which then started me having to move a lot and feeling like I was being sought after.
• 1:13:45
  So
• 1:13:48
  Rupert Isaacson: you sort of had to go on the run again?
• 1:13:52
  Christine Dickson: Yeah.
• 1:13:52
  Rupert Isaacson: And how long did that last?
• 1:13:55
  Christine Dickson: Years, years.
• 1:13:56
  What was interesting is that
• 1:14:01
  I sometimes would question whether I was just being paranoid.
• 1:14:07
  But, you know, he had put that paranoia in me too.
• 1:14:10
  He had told me one time that if people, if certain bad people knew or
• 1:14:14
  believed and thought that I knew how to make math, that they would kidnap
• 1:14:19
  me in order to get that information.
• 1:14:23
  So, and there was a lot of people that were his friends that were not happy
• 1:14:28
  that he pled guilty and that I got out.
• 1:14:32
  And I found out years later that there were places that I had left
• 1:14:38
  and moved and within weeks they had tracked me down to those places.
• 1:14:43
  Now whether or not there was nefarious intent or it was just about getting
• 1:14:49
  me back to bringing the kids.
• 1:14:52
  You know, I also just didn't really
• 1:14:56
  want to be bringing my kids to prisons all the time for visits.
• 1:15:01
  And there was a lot of.
• 1:15:03
  There was a lot of racism and, and horrible views that I didn't want
• 1:15:09
  them exposed to as young children, you know, if, if they get exposed
• 1:15:12
  to that as a, as young adults, they already have the framework,
• 1:15:16
  but I didn't want that for them.
• 1:15:23
  Rupert Isaacson: What became of this person in the end?
• 1:15:27
  Christine Dickson: Oh yeah, so I wish I could say that that was the
• 1:15:30
  last bad relationship I had, but I had to do it again just to be sure.
• 1:15:34
  But.
• 1:15:35
  In probably like
• 1:15:39
  2005, I'm thinking he tracked me down.
• 1:15:42
  He got, had got out of jail and his girlfriend was like,
• 1:15:47
  kind of like super hacker.
• 1:15:51
  Internet genius and anyway, she tracked me down.
• 1:15:55
  She had like Google aerial views of the house I was living in and,
• 1:16:00
  and he convinced his daughter who I always loved very much.
• 1:16:04
  He had four children before we were together and his daughter
• 1:16:09
  was coming out to California.
• 1:16:10
  With her fiancee and he convinced her to come and reconnect with me.
• 1:16:16
  So that was a trippy day within minutes to be on the phone with him after not
• 1:16:21
  talking to him for years and years.
• 1:16:25
  But he I don't think he ever really got over his propensity for meth.
• 1:16:34
  And I think he was probably still doing it.
• 1:16:39
  He, in 2014 15 he died of a heart attack.
• 1:16:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Did you feel a great sense of relief and
• 1:16:49
  did that make you feel guilty?
• 1:16:55
  Christine Dickson: I didn't feel relief to be honest with you.
• 1:16:58
  Because I had already reclaimed my life.
• 1:17:02
  I, he didn't hold any kind of fear for me.
• 1:17:09
  I felt sadness for my children who had been trying their best to have
• 1:17:14
  some form of relationship with him.
• 1:17:17
  You know, nobody goes, he ended up spending more than 10 years in jail
• 1:17:22
  and nobody goes through that without having it affect them in very deep ways.
• 1:17:27
  He was unable to be present at all.
• 1:17:30
  He talked at, at you more than to you.
• 1:17:33
  They had a really hard time connecting with him to have some kind of idea
• 1:17:38
  of who their father was and it was very hard on them when he died.
• 1:17:41
  Not because there was a great love there, but because of what
• 1:17:45
  the loss of what could have been.
• 1:17:50
  And I just felt sadness because of the choices he made.
• 1:18:00
  He could have had so much more love in his life and such a better impact.
• 1:18:05
  But, you know, there's an aspect of him that knew that
• 1:18:08
  he wasn't well, and, you know,
• 1:18:14
  that it was probably good that he wasn't around the kids when he
• 1:18:17
  was young, when they were young.
• 1:18:21
  Rupert Isaacson: You're a young mother, you have your kids on the run, then
• 1:18:26
  you're arrested and you're in jail for 15 months while your children are very small.
• 1:18:32
  Mm hmm.
• 1:18:33
  How did you survive that?
• 1:18:34
  That's enough to
• 1:18:40
  take one down.
• 1:18:41
  You know, talk us through the survival process of that.
• 1:18:48
  Christine Dickson: I had never been away from my children.
• 1:18:53
  I don't think I had ever spent one night away from them.
• 1:18:56
  We were very close.
• 1:18:57
  And, When things like this happen, like, with any disaster that natural
• 1:19:03
  does, you know, everything slows down and you just do what you need to do in
• 1:19:06
  the moment and you don't have time or the luxury to think about the future
• 1:19:12
  or what, you know, and so I think that
• 1:19:16
  once I had once they were picked up from the police station.
• 1:19:25
  My job was to not fall apart in front of them and then I
• 1:19:29
  could fall apart when they left.
• 1:19:31
  And I'll never forget the first conversation I had with my
• 1:19:35
  daughter because she was, she was four and or three, was she?
• 1:19:42
  No, two and a half.
• 1:19:44
  So she was, it was a couple months before her fourth birthday and
• 1:19:52
  the first phone call I had with her took a few days to get to, but she was hysterical
• 1:20:01
  and she was saying, come get me mommy, come get me.
• 1:20:06
  And I broke.
• 1:20:10
  I just,
• 1:20:14
  my knees buckled and
• 1:20:19
  I, there was nothing I could do.
• 1:20:23
  The only thing that I could do was manage their care as
• 1:20:29
  best I could from where I was.
• 1:20:33
  Rupert Isaacson: How, how did you do that?
• 1:20:36
  Where were they?
• 1:20:37
  Christine Dickson: So, you know, it wasn't perfect.
• 1:20:42
  They were at first at.
• 1:20:44
  Their dad's ex, their half sister, brother, or their half
• 1:20:48
  brother and half sister's house.
• 1:20:50
  But there wasn't really a parent in that house during the day, you know, it
• 1:20:54
  was like the teenage kids and it wasn't the, I'm hugely grateful because every
• 1:21:00
  other woman that was in there with me, their kids were taken into foster care.
• 1:21:04
  Rupert Isaacson: Right, that was going to be my question, how come they
• 1:21:05
  weren't taken as wards of the state?
• 1:21:07
  Christine Dickson: Because I had someone that could come get them.
• 1:21:09
  And because, you know, to be honest with you it really could
• 1:21:13
  have been, cause I was white,
• 1:21:16
  really.
• 1:21:16
  I mean, I, to think that that's not doesn't play into people, into
• 1:21:22
  things would be, you know, ignorant.
• 1:21:26
  The other women that I was in jail, they were in jail with me, the women in the
• 1:21:30
  federal system were almost all Latina.
• 1:21:35
  And a lot of them didn't speak English and yeah, and their kids
• 1:21:40
  were taken into foster care.
• 1:21:42
  I don't know if it's because they didn't have,
• 1:21:46
  didn't have representation, if they didn't have people that they could go with.
• 1:21:50
  I don't, I don't know.
• 1:21:51
  I did have a lawyer, pretty.
• 1:21:53
  Quickly.
• 1:21:54
  So,
• 1:21:57
  but they ended up with them and then I had to get them out of there
• 1:22:01
  because it wasn't a good place.
• 1:22:03
  And they ended up going to a friend of my exes who had, we had visited before
• 1:22:11
  and they had a house and a pool and kids.
• 1:22:14
  And from my perspective, it was a stable home she stayed
• 1:22:20
  home and took care of the kids.
• 1:22:22
  He worked.
• 1:22:23
  It turned out to not be as good of an environment as I had hoped, but
• 1:22:29
  other people that were trying to step up, we're only willing to take 1
• 1:22:33
  child and I was not separating them.
• 1:22:36
  So the options weren't great.
• 1:22:41
  But they were the best that I could get and they could have been much worse.
• 1:22:48
  But that's, that's, you know, I've lived.
• 1:22:54
  One of the things that I think is so important when you have something
• 1:22:59
  like this happen in a family is to take responsibility for your
• 1:23:05
  role and to not be defensive.
• 1:23:10
  I've never been, I've always tried to raise my children with the
• 1:23:17
  understanding that their experience is their experience and that.
• 1:23:23
  You know, we could talk about how I was 16 when I met him, but I still
• 1:23:28
  hold accountability for what happened.
• 1:23:32
  And if they're ever upset with me or frustrated or sad, that's their right.
• 1:23:39
  And I'm, I don't defend myself.
• 1:23:43
  I'm not here to change their mind.
• 1:23:46
  I'm here to allow their experience to be their experience.
• 1:23:51
  And because of that, We don't have an elephant in the room.
• 1:23:59
  They don't feel that they can't tell me how they feel because somehow it'll hurt
• 1:24:06
  me so much I won't be able to take it.
• 1:24:09
  So they hold it all in.
• 1:24:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Thank you.
• 1:24:21
  When somebody shares a story that you, like the one that you just shared,
• 1:24:28
  it gives everybody else permission to have lived their
• 1:24:35
  lives too, if that makes sense.
• 1:24:36
  And you,
• 1:24:42
  you create healing.
• 1:24:45
  By,
• 1:24:51
  by sharing and what it also does, I think, for, you know, those of us who are
• 1:24:57
  working in the fields of mental health is, you don't know who's walking through
• 1:25:03
  the door and you don't know what fires they have to put out in their lives.
• 1:25:08
  All you can do is
• 1:25:12
  let the horses do what they do.
• 1:25:14
  And one cannot presume as a human to, it's so interesting is that
• 1:25:20
  we're all empathetic to each other.
• 1:25:21
  We're social creatures.
• 1:25:23
  We are basically empathetic to each other, thank God.
• 1:25:30
  But there's a limit to what we can
• 1:25:37
  offer each other for healing because
• 1:25:40
  of our own fires and egos and, and so on the horse doesn't come with that.
• 1:25:46
  And but by sharing a story like that, you come very, very close
• 1:25:50
  to the role that the horse does, which is you're saying, here I am
• 1:26:01
  having lived this experience.
• 1:26:09
  This allows you to be human too.
• 1:26:14
  I know that's not necessarily what you're consciously saying, but.
• 1:26:18
  I think when I think it's how it gets received and I think that this
• 1:26:22
  brings a very similar kind of healing to the type of healing a horse
• 1:26:27
  would bring or nature would bring.
• 1:26:29
  So for that, I'm extremely grateful.
• 1:26:31
  And I can see why somebody coming to your barn, this being the point of it
• 1:26:38
  sort of doesn't matter that your equine experience might be somewhat recent.
• 1:26:45
  With the type of experience that you've had in life, you are
• 1:26:50
  very well set up to help people.
• 1:26:53
  Now, you then go from this experience and some others
• 1:27:01
  into therapeutic modalities.
• 1:27:05
  I presume to some degree to help yourself out too.
• 1:27:09
  And you find yourself with hypnotherapy and then you find your way to IEMT.
• 1:27:14
  Please talk to us about why and tell us what they do.
• 1:27:19
  Christine Dickson: Yes.
• 1:27:20
  I do want to say 1 thing 1st, because I realized you asked me
• 1:27:23
  a question that I never answered.
• 1:27:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:27:27
  Christine Dickson: Or never fully answered.
• 1:27:28
  And which was around the the idea of how.
• 1:27:34
  What would my maybe, what would I want to share with people who
• 1:27:39
  are doing the aquine work and.
• 1:27:43
  I think the biggest thing I see, and it doesn't matter how many degrees you have.
• 1:27:47
  Or what initials are behind your name.
• 1:27:50
  I see this happen a lot and this is where as any type of mental health
• 1:27:58
  work or any type of supportive work for people is so important to really,
• 1:28:02
  really develop a sense of when we're projecting onto people because we, if
• 1:28:12
  we allow ourselves to do that, we're going to get it wrong at some point and
• 1:28:18
  the way I see this happen is there's, there's Two ways in my experience.
• 1:28:25
  One is,
• 1:28:28
  my mother
• 1:28:33
  was something I survived
• 1:28:38
  and how beautiful is it that there are people in this world
• 1:28:42
  that can't even comprehend that.
• 1:28:44
  And
• 1:28:48
  there's people in this world that get very uncomfortable.
• 1:28:52
  If you say anything negative about your mother, if you tell people that
• 1:28:59
  you have had to limit your exposure to your mother, they can't understand.
• 1:29:09
  And I have had that happen in with people who were doing quote
• 1:29:16
  unquote, like force therapy type work where they projected onto me
• 1:29:26
  this idea that my family.
• 1:29:31
  Was my, were my ancestors and they were part of me and I had to be
• 1:29:37
  grateful for them and I had, and it was, it was not very informed.
• 1:29:43
  Put it that way
• 1:29:47
  and I think that this is.
• 1:29:51
  I've heard of this struggle with other people who have had parents
• 1:29:54
  that are so toxic that sometimes no contact is the only way to protect
• 1:29:59
  yourself and people don't understand and it gets people very uncomfortable.
• 1:30:04
  So, being able to see how we don't project that in our work is, is important.
• 1:30:10
  The other one is when you've been in a pathological love relationship
• 1:30:15
  or even pathological relationship as an adult child with a parent.
• 1:30:22
  There can be really unhealthy things that happen.
• 1:30:25
  One of the things is that the way pathological relations work is very
• 1:30:29
  similar to horse training, or at least the, the, the older model of horse
• 1:30:33
  training that is shifting, which is the idea of pressure and release pathological
• 1:30:40
  relationships become a pressure and release modality, which means that the
• 1:30:46
  uncomfortableness or the anger or the manipulation that's trying to happen.
• 1:30:53
  From the person with the pathological issue becomes a pressure that
• 1:30:58
  the only way we feel safe.
• 1:31:01
  Is that we have to relieve that pressure that could mean paying their bills.
• 1:31:06
  It could mean agreeing to not see our friends.
• 1:31:09
  It could mean a bunch of things.
• 1:31:12
  And those don't necessarily go away when you separate from that
• 1:31:17
  person because it's a power and they're trying to to wield and.
• 1:31:22
  For a long time, mental health professionals did not understand the
• 1:31:27
  dynamic and they would further shame the person who was being manipulated
• 1:31:35
  because they're going, wait a minute.
• 1:31:35
  I don't understand.
• 1:31:36
  You're not even together anymore.
• 1:31:39
  You're not even together anymore and you, and you've just paid
• 1:31:43
  their car payment for them?
• 1:31:44
  Like, what are you talking about?
• 1:31:48
  The person already feels shame for the fact that they did it.
• 1:31:55
  The threat of not doing it and the pressure of being able to resist
• 1:32:02
  all of the manipulation and all the ways that that person has
• 1:32:05
  shown you that they will burn it to the ground if you do not comply.
• 1:32:12
  Well, then it's a choice.
• 1:32:17
  That's not really doesn't feel like a choice.
• 1:32:19
  Do I want to die on this hill?
• 1:32:20
  Do I want to invite this in?
• 1:32:22
  It takes time and Sometimes those are the relationships like these are not
• 1:32:28
  clear cut These types of relationships are ones that people do that women
• 1:32:33
  do get killed the the you know People will say in abusive relationships
• 1:32:38
  Oh, why didn't you just leave?
• 1:32:39
  Or when you read about women who poisoned or, or, you know, ultimately
• 1:32:44
  killed their abuser and they'll go, why didn't they just leave?
• 1:32:48
  They could have just left.
• 1:32:50
  And what they don't understand is, and this, this isn't just to
• 1:32:53
  women, this is men too, men are in these relationships as well is that
• 1:32:57
  the point to which you are most vulnerable is when you decide to leave.
• 1:33:04
  Because you have started to demonstrate that you're no longer under the spell and
• 1:33:08
  you've connected to the fact that you have power and that's the thing that has been
• 1:33:12
  fought, has been the whole MO is for you to never believe that you have agency.
• 1:33:20
  And so when you start to believe that that needs to be taken down,
• 1:33:23
  and when you take that action is when
• 1:33:27
  the big retaliations can happen.
• 1:33:30
  So it's not true that people can just walk out and people don't have
• 1:33:36
  the support that there, it just doesn't exist in a lot of ways.
• 1:33:39
  So
• 1:33:41
  this is the one thing I wanted to say about the people that show up.
• 1:33:47
  Because a lot of times people who are in these relationships will show up for help.
• 1:33:54
  And you have to be careful of what help that you're suggesting, because if you
• 1:34:00
  don't know the actual situation and you suggest someone leave it without proper
• 1:34:07
  support, which is going to definitely go beyond your, your skill set, they could be
• 1:34:13
  getting into a more dangerous situation.
• 1:34:17
  And this is a type of brainwashing that takes years to undo.
• 1:34:23
  It's not intellectual.
• 1:34:25
  They already know they're being manipulated.
• 1:34:28
  They know that things don't add up and that they're stuck.
• 1:34:31
  They just don't know how to get out of it.
• 1:34:33
  Because it's a grind.
• 1:34:34
  You got ground down.
• 1:34:37
  So that, that is something that I feel very passionate about.
• 1:34:41
  And that I would say anybody, any other person doing this work
• 1:34:48
  that has any questions, if I would be happy to answer them.
• 1:34:53
  Answer.
• 1:34:54
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, this is going to be at the end of this.
• 1:34:56
  I'm sure I, and I'm sure a lot of people listening to say, can
• 1:34:59
  we come to you for mentorship?
• 1:35:00
  Because
• 1:35:04
  without a doubt, there are people who are facing this and as you say, it's
• 1:35:09
  male and female, as you say, it's all walks of life, as you say, you know,
• 1:35:13
  and I don't think there are many people with the skill set that you have who
• 1:35:18
  can advise on these things like you can.
• 1:35:19
  So we, we will get to you.
• 1:35:21
  There will be, so listeners, there will be a contact that you can go to Christine
• 1:35:26
  and get further mentorship on this.
• 1:35:29
  Talk to us about the hypnotherapy now and talk to us about the IEMT, please.
• 1:35:33
  And then how does that inform recovery?
• 1:35:38
  Christine Dickson: So hypnotherapy, we talked about the 88 percent being
• 1:35:42
  the subconscious and that's where our programming is the, the ways of
• 1:35:46
  seeing ourself and the world that let's say we didn't consciously choose.
• 1:35:51
  They were, you know, downloaded into us as children and society, all of these things.
• 1:35:58
  So the beauty of hypnotherapy is that you get access to that subconscious
• 1:36:06
  programming so you can start to make suggestions into the subconscious mind.
• 1:36:13
  To create knowns in the subconscious that will support your conscious decisions.
• 1:36:23
  So, if you know, if I want to like working out, you know, if I want to,
• 1:36:31
  I want to start working out, well, it's going to be helpful to have some
• 1:36:38
  suggestions made to the subconscious that connect you to the subconscious.
• 1:36:45
  Feelings, the why, the feelings of after a workout, the feelings of why I want to
• 1:36:49
  do this, what I'm, I'm reaching for health wise or body wise and feeling strong or
• 1:36:55
  what I'll be able to do and how I'll be able to support my body versus the pain
• 1:37:01
  being the forefront thought of the actual working out of how we don't want to do it
• 1:37:06
  or it's boring or it's this or it's that.
• 1:37:08
  So it's kind of like, you know, eating, eating foods.
• 1:37:14
  That you don't want to eat is very similar, sweets and stuff like that
• 1:37:18
  is very similar to drinking alcohol because we want that positive feeling
• 1:37:25
  that we get right in the beginning and our mind completely gaslights us
• 1:37:30
  about what the effect is afterwards.
• 1:37:32
  It doesn't even show it to us.
• 1:37:34
  Don't think about what's afterwards.
• 1:37:36
  Just let's just focus on that initial feeling.
• 1:37:40
  And then after we do, it's like, we wake up and go, now we're
• 1:37:42
  dealing with the after effects.
• 1:37:44
  And it's like, why was I, I was like under a trance before.
• 1:37:47
  Well,
• 1:37:47
  Rupert Isaacson: dopamine, dopamine is a strong thing, right?
• 1:37:49
  Yeah.
• 1:37:50
  Christine Dickson: Yes.
• 1:37:51
  Yeah.
• 1:37:52
  So that's, so that's the, that's just a little aspect of hypnotherapy.
• 1:37:57
  IAMT, you know, I've, I've, I've been exposed to a ton of other modalities.
• 1:38:02
  What does IAMT
• 1:38:03
  Rupert Isaacson: stand for?
• 1:38:04
  Christine Dickson: It's Integral Eye Movement Therapy or
• 1:38:06
  Integral Eye Movement Technique.
• 1:38:07
  IAMT So,
• 1:38:10
  Rupert Isaacson: how's it work?
• 1:38:12
  Christine Dickson: How it works is
• 1:38:16
  our mind's body, our mind's body.
• 1:38:18
  Wow.
• 1:38:19
  Our mind's First and foremost goal is to keep us alive.
• 1:38:25
  Rupert Isaacson: I love our mind's body
• 1:38:27
  Christine Dickson: Our mind's body.
• 1:38:28
  It was it was almost like a
• 1:38:29
  Rupert Isaacson: body.
• 1:38:30
  Our mind does think of our body as its property.
• 1:38:32
  Yeah, it's very interesting Yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:34
  Yeah.
• 1:38:35
  Okay.
• 1:38:35
  Okay So
• 1:38:39
  Christine Dickson: now the interesting thing is that because it wants to keep
• 1:38:44
  us alive, it wants us to avoid pain because logically pain can lead to
• 1:38:49
  death, but the mind doesn't differentiate between physical and emotional pain.
• 1:38:55
  Pain is pain and pain needs to be avoided.
• 1:39:02
  So the way I see it is that when, if you know anything about internal
• 1:39:09
  family systems or I have IFS, the premises is that when we're a kid.
• 1:39:16
  This almost internal family gets formed in our minds and the predominant.
• 1:39:22
  Role is the manager and this is what it looks like.
• 1:39:25
  I'm a little kid.
• 1:39:26
  I'm three years old.
• 1:39:27
  I'm wide open, right?
• 1:39:29
  I'm wide open.
• 1:39:31
  Hey, I don't have any defenses.
• 1:39:32
  I don't have any protections up yet And I find a frog in the backyard and i'm so
• 1:39:38
  excited and I take my frog in the house and i'm like mommy Mommy, look at my frog.
• 1:39:42
  Look what I found and she's like I told you to get out of here
• 1:39:45
  I'm in the middle of something.
• 1:39:46
  Why are you such a pain in the ass all the time get outside and play?
• 1:39:54
  Well, all of that openness, that is like a collapse.
• 1:40:00
  It's a collapse.
• 1:40:01
  It is a deep, deep wound.
• 1:40:07
  And in that moment, a manager gets formed,
• 1:40:13
  because we don't want to feel that pain ever again.
• 1:40:18
  And the manager goes, stupid, look what you did, stupid.
• 1:40:23
  Don't do that again.
• 1:40:25
  Just play with yourself.
• 1:40:26
  You don't need anybody else.
• 1:40:31
  And that manager from that point on is always looking for ways that
• 1:40:38
  that stupid part of you is going to be open and get hurt again.
• 1:40:47
  And that part of you that got hurt becomes what they call the exile
• 1:40:50
  and it gets put in a box and it gets thrown in the dungeon and it is exile.
• 1:40:57
  We cannot trust that part of you.
• 1:41:01
  And as we all know, children learn how to regulate their nervous
• 1:41:06
  system through co regulation.
• 1:41:09
  And when you don't have a parent.
• 1:41:12
  That you can go to when either you're super happy or super sad or super scared
• 1:41:17
  that will hold you and listen to you and let you use their nervous system to bring
• 1:41:22
  yourself back down and you go, well, I'm just going to have to do it for myself.
• 1:41:29
  You can't do co regulation for yourself, but what you can do is you can dissociate
• 1:41:37
  and that starts to feel like a superpower
• 1:41:41
  and you become more and more intellectual and you intellectualize things and you
• 1:41:46
  go, you know, that doesn't hurt me.
• 1:41:49
  Yeah, I don't get bothered by that stuff.
• 1:41:50
  It's not that you don't.
• 1:41:52
  It's that you have dulled that to the point where when it comes in, it's so
• 1:41:55
  automatic that that gets put in a box and put away that you never even experience
• 1:42:00
  you bypass the whole experience.
• 1:42:06
  So we have, we all have all these managers, right?
• 1:42:09
  So this is how I describe IEMT.
• 1:42:12
  So
• 1:42:14
  now when that happened, right, let's imagine that what you heard
• 1:42:21
  that manager is saying is that nobody wants to hear from you.
• 1:42:25
  That creates kind of a tuning fork within your psyche.
• 1:42:29
  It's like a, it's like a lens.
• 1:42:31
  Every situation after that point is going to be scanning for how
• 1:42:39
  no one wants to hear from you.
• 1:42:43
  If someone that, you know, just says, Hey, what's up?
• 1:42:46
  And like, and just walks past you and keeps going.
• 1:42:48
  It's not that they're busy.
• 1:42:49
  It's not that they're it's that they're avoiding it because
• 1:42:52
  nobody wants to hear from you.
• 1:42:55
  Right.
• 1:42:55
  We go into every situation with this anxiety that nobody wants to hear from me.
• 1:42:59
  Every situation we see goes to that lens and validates.
• 1:43:03
  So now this memory that created the manager, well, the mind
• 1:43:12
  kept that memory as being sharp.
• 1:43:16
  So what I mean by that is the memory lives in the hippocampus,
• 1:43:23
  but it has a direct link right into the amygdala, which is
• 1:43:27
  the nervous system, the body.
• 1:43:28
  So mind and body are connected in that memory.
• 1:43:32
  You cannot intellectualize your way out of the effects of that memory.
• 1:43:37
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:43:37
  There's going to be cortisol.
• 1:43:39
  Yeah.
• 1:43:39
  Christine Dickson: Yeah.
• 1:43:39
  It's, it's, it's connected.
• 1:43:42
  So
• 1:43:45
  what I am T does is it's a, it's, it's simplistic in its approach.
• 1:43:56
  And the whole goal is to dial down or disconnect that connection between
• 1:44:02
  the hippocampus and the amygdala.
• 1:44:06
  And the beauty of this is that when you take the negative charge away
• 1:44:13
  from that fast memory, You get to now have perspective on the memory
• 1:44:20
  because you're not activated.
• 1:44:21
  When we're activated, our wise mind, our ability to have perspective and,
• 1:44:27
  and to see it from a bigger, see the bigger picture is, is almost non
• 1:44:32
  existent because we're activated.
• 1:44:35
  Take away the activation.
• 1:44:37
  We can use our own wisdom and our own views to put perspective on something that
• 1:44:47
  I don't know like it was so triggering.
• 1:44:52
  And now, oh, wow.
• 1:44:55
  Yeah.
• 1:44:56
  God, my mom was doing that to all of us.
• 1:44:59
  All the time.
• 1:44:59
  She was so stressed out, you know, and I know what was going on then.
• 1:45:04
  And, and
• 1:45:08
  yeah, I can see.
• 1:45:09
  But, you know, like you just start to see it differently.
• 1:45:12
  And then all of those domino effect.
• 1:45:14
  The domino effect of everything that you built on top of that.
• 1:45:18
  That all starts to fall away.
• 1:45:24
  And.
• 1:45:26
  This works amazingly because you know what the thing is, is that the whole
• 1:45:31
  system, this whole system was created in our evolution to help us as children
• 1:45:39
  when we're in an environment to survive the adaptive child needs to adapt and
• 1:45:44
  survive the environment, but those tools that it created do not necessarily
• 1:45:49
  service as adults when we have agency,
• 1:45:54
  you can keep the wisdom of a past experience.
• 1:45:58
  Transcribed
• 1:46:00
  without needing the charge.
• 1:46:04
  So let's say you like to apply this to horses.
• 1:46:06
  Let's say you had a accident on a horse, you know, you, you were riding your horses
• 1:46:13
  and then you have this terrible accident and you got really hurt or sometimes
• 1:46:17
  you didn't even have to get really hurt.
• 1:46:19
  Sometimes people have small accidents.
• 1:46:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, they make, it doesn't care that
• 1:46:25
  threat is real or imagined.
• 1:46:26
  That's the.
• 1:46:27
  Getting a pretty score.
• 1:46:29
  Yeah.
• 1:46:29
  Yeah.
• 1:46:29
  Yeah.
• 1:46:30
  Christine Dickson: And then now you have anxiety about writing,
• 1:46:33
  but then you have anxiety about having anxiety because anxiety leads
• 1:46:36
  to more crashes and more issues.
• 1:46:38
  So, and then you're trying to force yourself to not be anxious
• 1:46:43
  or pretend that you're not anxious.
• 1:46:45
  And then you have shame around now that you feel bad about that.
• 1:46:48
  And, and so being able to take away the charge is just this It's an opening.
• 1:46:53
  It's just, it creates an opening for this, these charges to leave and the
• 1:47:00
  wisdom and perspective to come in.
• 1:47:05
  Rupert Isaacson: How do you bring that into work with horses and people?
• 1:47:10
  Are you doing this work with the rapid eye movement, following your finger,
• 1:47:14
  et cetera, while they're working with the horse or on the horse, or you're
• 1:47:20
  doing this away from the horse in another, context, but it's the same
• 1:47:24
  client and you're offering a knock on an equine thing within your practice.
• 1:47:32
  Christine Dickson: Yes.
• 1:47:32
  And, and, and, you know, I will say that the majority of my clients, we don't have
• 1:47:37
  the equine part because they're virtual.
• 1:47:39
  They live all over the place.
• 1:47:41
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:47:41
  Christine Dickson: The only people
• 1:47:43
  Rupert Isaacson: that you can do this over zoom.
• 1:47:45
  Christine Dickson: Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 1:47:47
  Absolutely.
• 1:47:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Do you hear that everyone?
• 1:47:49
  Christine Dickson: Yeah.
• 1:47:50
  Most of this, most of my work is done through zoom.
• 1:47:53
  That's why Also that I say, like, the the equine part isn't as big of a role because
• 1:47:59
  it only I can only offer it to the people that are that are in my area or I also do.
• 1:48:07
  I do weekend intensives 1 on 1.
• 1:48:10
  so people will come and stay with me for a weekend.
• 1:48:13
  And they will work with the horses, but
• 1:48:17
  Rupert Isaacson: okay, I'm just thinking I can imagine doing this.
• 1:48:20
  on a horse.
• 1:48:21
  I'm just now imagining being on a horse in a nice situation with a nice
• 1:48:27
  horse, with a horse moving nicely underneath me, or perhaps a horse being
• 1:48:31
  static and peaceful underneath me.
• 1:48:35
  And you taking me through this rapid eye movement way to dis, dis,
• 1:48:45
  Remove the hippocampus amygdala connection.
• 1:48:51
  And if I am someone who likes that environment, horses, perhaps I'll also
• 1:48:58
  maybe like to do it under a tree perhaps.
• 1:49:00
  I'll also maybe like to do it in water, perhaps.
• 1:49:02
  You know, people have their different
• 1:49:06
  happy places, but obviously if wee horse people, that's ponies I could see.
• 1:49:11
  A double power because I could see, I could see a subconscious reaction
• 1:49:15
  going, Oh, well, I'm being listened to because I've been placed in
• 1:49:22
  the, even if it's by myself in the environment, that is the best for me.
• 1:49:28
  Sensorally, emotionally, and so on.
• 1:49:33
  So I could see a real power in doing this with the horse, but I could also
• 1:49:36
  see what's great is that you could also do this completely without because,
• 1:49:41
  You're not always with the horse and as you say, you can do this over distance.
• 1:49:44
  What, what it seems that you're describing here is a shamanic process.
• 1:49:49
  So when I've had the experience with.
• 1:49:53
  Shamans in indigenous cultures, there is a, it's, it's usually conflict
• 1:50:02
  resolution and that conflict is often internal, but it can be also external.
• 1:50:07
  So the shaman could be addressing conflict within the group, for example,
• 1:50:11
  or conflict between two people equally.
• 1:50:16
  It's conflict.
• 1:50:16
  You know, if there's a health issue, that's still a
• 1:50:18
  conflict, it's still a dilemma.
• 1:50:20
  And the idea is to resolve that dilemma.
• 1:50:22
  And I think that one of the things which is tricky for us, all of us in our
• 1:50:28
  culture, and by our culture I don't just mean Europe and America, I mean everything
• 1:50:34
  that is post agricultural in the world and is not hunter gatherer, basically.
• 1:50:38
  Anything that has gone through this process of kind of, Becoming
• 1:50:43
  processed in a funny way.
• 1:50:45
  Removal from nature, which is also a deep wound.
• 1:50:50
  Is we've, we, we, we cannot be other than mentally ill in that situation.
• 1:50:57
  Because, so therefore we must all be, because we're all suffering,
• 1:51:00
  we're all animals in a cage.
• 1:51:03
  And sometimes the cage is nicer than the other cages, but it's still a cage.
• 1:51:10
  And we lack community, and we lack the, the good shaman, but we also
• 1:51:16
  have gone from The predator being, or the danger being, obviously the lion,
• 1:51:23
  the tiger, the whatever, but also, say, the elephant or the black mamba.
• 1:51:30
  But not, in the hunter gatherer culture, your fellow human.
• 1:51:36
  And the, even though humans are as funky in hunter gatherer life as they
• 1:51:40
  are in non hunter gatherer life, there is a process to defunkify and, keep
• 1:51:47
  those conflicts cleansed so that the community doesn't fragment and people
• 1:51:51
  don't get eaten by hyenas basically.
• 1:51:54
  Now we've replaced the hyena with ourselves and this sends us mad
• 1:52:01
  because it's not how it's supposed to be and yet we have to navigate this.
• 1:52:07
  And it's almost impossible.
• 1:52:11
  It seems to me that what you're describing particularly with
• 1:52:15
  IEMT is a way to in our society
• 1:52:24
  have that shamanic conflict resolving cleansing reboot
• 1:52:31
  that allows you to navigate and that sounds incredibly useful.
• 1:52:38
  What I can also say is, you know, having tried it.
• 1:52:42
  Because remember in Birmingham, I was like, all right, then do it.
• 1:52:45
  And you threw it and you did take me through it and I was
• 1:52:48
  like, oh, that did actually take the sting out of that memory.
• 1:52:54
  That's cra That's amazing.
• 1:52:55
  And it was so And then you
• 1:52:56
  Christine Dickson: overslept . Yeah.
• 1:52:57
  It
• 1:52:58
  Rupert Isaacson: was so, yes, exactly.
• 1:53:00
  Yeah.
• 1:53:00
  It's like, then I, yeah, then I slept.
• 1:53:02
  Like I hadn't slept in, I don't know.
• 1:53:05
  But the, so if people are coming into equine assisted work, do you think, would
• 1:53:15
  you recommend, because I think this is something anyone can learn, right, IEMT,
• 1:53:20
  would you, would you, would you recommend that as, as a modality that those of
• 1:53:26
  us who are working with mental health should, you know, In whatever field
• 1:53:29
  should should look at do you teach it?
• 1:53:32
  Christine Dickson: So, Here's the funny thing about amt is that when
• 1:53:36
  it was first when it was first shown to me I mean I was laughing because
• 1:53:43
  I was like, what did you just do?
• 1:53:45
  Like, that's crazy.
• 1:53:47
  And I was like, I have to learn this.
• 1:53:50
  And,
• 1:53:53
  and so because it works so clearly for me and it works so easily for
• 1:53:58
  you, I had this vision of like getting trained in it as being super easy.
• 1:54:05
  Like that was really easy.
• 1:54:06
  That was really straightforward.
• 1:54:08
  It is not.
• 1:54:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay, I can believe it.
• 1:54:10
  Damn.
• 1:54:12
  Christine Dickson: Because, because, that's when everything goes right.
• 1:54:20
  But remember we all have those managers, and let me tell you something.
• 1:54:23
  I've been working with someone where I'm looking dead in the face of
• 1:54:27
  their managers and their managers are going, Oh, she thinks that
• 1:54:29
  we're going to let her let this go.
• 1:54:31
  That's hilarious.
• 1:54:32
  I don't know what you think you come here to do lady, but there's
• 1:54:35
  no way you're getting past us.
• 1:54:37
  Like you have to have, you have to have all of the different ways that this can
• 1:54:45
  go and know how to navigate through to find Ways around these things because
• 1:54:53
  I've had to go all different directions.
• 1:54:57
  So because it was easy, like for me, as, as with you and really direct,
• 1:55:02
  like, I thought, oh, it's just going to be learning about the questions
• 1:55:04
  and how the, you know, to move people's eyes and, and that'll be it.
• 1:55:08
  But it's not to say that if you do this work, that.
• 1:55:16
  As you, as you've done it, you're as a client that you can't take
• 1:55:22
  aspects of it and do it for yourself.
• 1:55:28
  And, and if you don't get the result, you know, like, you're not going to hurt
• 1:55:31
  yourself if you don't get the result.
• 1:55:34
  That you're looking for, then you would know that you maybe
• 1:55:36
  need some extra help on that.
• 1:55:39
  But yes, I think that once you experience it a few times or maybe
• 1:55:45
  more than a few, but like, then you can get a feel for it and use it.
• 1:55:51
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:55:52
  Also, maybe you could, let's say you're an equine practitioner.
• 1:55:56
  You're listening to this.
• 1:55:56
  You're thinking, well, you know, I like the sound of this, but I haven't
• 1:56:00
  got the time to, you know, I've got to feed all my horses and I haven't
• 1:56:03
  got the time to go learn this.
• 1:56:05
  Modality, which Christina's just divulge is perhaps a little bit trickier to learn.
• 1:56:10
  We were hoping like everything, but perhaps I could team up
• 1:56:14
  with someone who has that, that who has learned that modality.
• 1:56:19
  And then perhaps we could join forces within the practice.
• 1:56:25
  Have that so let's say I mean obviously I'm in Germany you're in California but
• 1:56:31
  let's say you were down the road from me.
• 1:56:34
  I could see saying Okay, Christine.
• 1:56:37
  Could we join forces here?
• 1:56:39
  I'm doing this thing.
• 1:56:41
  This is this horse boy thing.
• 1:56:42
  This is this movement method things is this ticking thing Would you please can I
• 1:56:47
  please send clients to you or could you?
• 1:56:51
  Come sometimes in certain sessions with certain people and bring
• 1:56:55
  that resource to the table.
• 1:56:59
  Is this, is it easy to find people who are trained like you are in this?
• 1:57:03
  Christine Dickson: It started in the UK and so it is there's a
• 1:57:08
  lot more practitioners in the UK.
• 1:57:11
  It's really only recently starting to get more and more attraction in the US.
• 1:57:18
  I think right now I'm one of, one of two listed practitioners in Los Angeles,
• 1:57:26
  the other one being my daughter.
• 1:57:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:57:29
  I thought it was more widespread.
• 1:57:30
  Yeah.
• 1:57:30
  Christine Dickson: Yeah, no, it's but it's really, as you saw, like, you know,
• 1:57:37
  with your own experience, it's really getting traction now and people are,
• 1:57:42
  are seeking it out because it works.
• 1:57:45
  Rupert Isaacson: So someone could say, you know, IEMT
• 1:57:48
  practitioners or therapists near me.
• 1:57:51
  Yeah, there's
• 1:57:52
  Christine Dickson: a, because once you get your certification,
• 1:57:54
  you're listed on the website.
• 1:57:56
  And so you, you can put, yes.
• 1:58:00
  Like I actually had a client on Saturday who found me through
• 1:58:05
  reading about IEMT on Reddit.
• 1:58:08
  And then Googled IAMT practitioners in Los Angeles, and I came up
• 1:58:16
  and that's how she found me.
• 1:58:18
  So, yes, and, and, you know, you have a lot of really good questions about
• 1:58:25
  doing stuff more with the horses, right?
• 1:58:28
  You know, these are all ways that, you know, who knows if that, you know, it
• 1:58:31
  doesn't, you don't have to have the horses because this is an inside job.
• 1:58:34
  You know, this is all about how you're, you know, Your mind and body are
• 1:58:37
  connected, but who knows ways that it could be expanded through actually being
• 1:58:45
  in the field with the horses or being there's so many, so many different things
• 1:58:51
  that you could try, you know, and I we are planning we have been planning.
• 1:58:57
  We're going to do it this year, but now we're doing it next year.
• 1:58:59
  Is a retreat where I'm kind of the on the human realm and she's working on the horse
• 1:59:06
  realm and by pairing up we get to support people in the work that they're doing.
• 1:59:13
  They want to do the work with the horses, but we all know our own personal work
• 1:59:17
  is just a Completely interwoven with that so not only the mentoring stuff
• 1:59:22
  and the other stuff, but if we come up against something that is rooted in
• 1:59:27
  that nervous system from a past memory, we could clear it out in real time and
• 1:59:33
  then what you're what what the people are there to learn about the horses.
• 1:59:37
  Doesn't have the roadblocks from the internal barriers anymore.
• 1:59:43
  Like everything can, can actually sink in and be more accessible.
• 1:59:49
  Rupert Isaacson: I think we need to try this.
• 1:59:51
  Okay.
• 1:59:51
  So listeners with your permission, Christine, should we decide to do
• 1:59:56
  this and invite people to come on a.
• 1:59:58
  Retreat like this in a workshop.
• 2:00:01
  Let's do the horse side.
• 2:00:02
  Let's do this side.
• 2:00:04
  Oh, I can't do this side, but you can do this side and let's see what happens.
• 2:00:10
  Why don't we do one steak side and one I'd be intrigued to
• 2:00:14
  see what people come away with.
• 2:00:16
  Maybe this would be something for professionals, you know, that coming
• 2:00:18
  from whatever side of the equine assisted field to be exposed to this.
• 2:00:24
  Something which we didn't get into, and we haven't got time to get into it now,
• 2:00:26
  because I think maybe we need to have you on again is I know that you've done
• 2:00:31
  a lot of work with addiction, people with addiction, celebrities with addiction.
• 2:00:36
  I know that you ended up building a large practice.
• 2:00:43
  That's had to, you know, you've had to protect people's anonymities.
• 2:00:48
  You've worked sort of at that level a bit in Hollywood, and that's given you
• 2:00:54
  a, an insight into How tricky it can be.
• 2:01:00
  This word navigation comes up again to help people who are in the public sphere
• 2:01:06
  and therefore can't, you know, go out there and be frank about what they're
• 2:01:12
  facing and what they're dealing with.
• 2:01:15
  Just because we're heading into towards towards the sort of natural
• 2:01:20
  end of this particular iteration, but I think we had to bring you back on.
• 2:01:25
  Can you just talk to us a little bit about.
• 2:01:28
  What that, how that has helped you, where you have to sort of, in your
• 2:01:33
  practice, where you have to help someone, but you also have to kind of keep it
• 2:01:37
  secret that you're helping them, that you have to, you have to dance around.
• 2:01:41
  You're talking about eggshells, you know, that these are very real ones
• 2:01:44
  suddenly, where you actually have to protect the people that you're working
• 2:01:47
  with, and at the same time, you know, get them through what they're doing.
• 2:01:50
  How has that particular, those years of doing that, helped
• 2:01:55
  you to help ordinary people?
• 2:01:59
  More deeply because it just adds a layer of complexity.
• 2:02:06
  Christine Dickson: It does.
• 2:02:06
  It does because, you know, a lot of people who are artists in
• 2:02:16
  entertainment are sensitive people.
• 2:02:19
  And one of the things that I think that we've seen really explode
• 2:02:27
  around social media is that.
• 2:02:31
  The dehumanizing of others and the fact that celebrities, we would talk about and
• 2:02:40
  weigh in on a celebrity's life in ways that we would never do to someone that
• 2:02:47
  we knew or someone's face, like it there.
• 2:02:50
  It's just like
• 2:02:51
  Rupert Isaacson: that's projection again.
• 2:02:52
  Yeah.
• 2:02:52
  Christine Dickson: Yeah.
• 2:02:53
  It's very bizarre.
• 2:02:55
  Social experiment that's, that's really has, but it has real life
• 2:03:02
  consequences depression, suicide and addiction being some of the ways that
• 2:03:08
  people end up succumbing to this mass.
• 2:03:14
  Feeling energetically that you are despised or ridiculous or shameful
• 2:03:23
  on talented, whatever it is.
• 2:03:24
  And, you know, I don't even pretend that I know what that's like, but I can
• 2:03:30
  say that when I did go through the rest and was on the news and all of that
• 2:03:35
  stuff and sitting in the courtroom and in an unveil hearing the prosecutions
• 2:03:39
  can say anything about you without.
• 2:03:41
  And so the things that they said were horrifying to me.
• 2:03:50
  I wasn't prepared.
• 2:03:51
  I didn't know any of that.
• 2:03:53
  And it felt like, and this was in the news, and I mean, it felt like you were
• 2:03:59
  hated by the world and you were being seen in a way that was not even true.
• 2:04:07
  And it's a very trippy feeling to have this like unknown, like faceless, you
• 2:04:13
  know, Enormity that now suddenly sees you has honed in on you and is projecting
• 2:04:23
  this negative energy towards you.
• 2:04:28
  So,
• 2:04:30
  you know, there's a difference when you're dealing with someone who is
• 2:04:34
  a public figure in any way, because in addiction, you talk about, you
• 2:04:40
  know, there's a saying that says you're only as sick as your secrets.
• 2:04:45
  So there's an aspect of ownership of being true that goes with healing, but
• 2:04:55
  I can't tell someone else whether that's what their experience is going to be
• 2:04:59
  if they come out to the world and share this aspect with them because it doesn't
• 2:05:04
  look like a lot of that is always true.
• 2:05:07
  Now, a lot of people who have done this have found that the amount of support
• 2:05:11
  they got way outweighed the negative comments, but this is more about.
• 2:05:20
  Navigating this internally and finding the forgiveness and finding the freedom
• 2:05:30
  and Knowing that that is your decision.
• 2:05:33
  I'm
• 2:05:37
  not sure if I answered that fully because I kind of just lost my train of thought
• 2:05:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, it sounds like what it gives you is compassion and perspective
• 2:05:49
  Christine Dickson: Yeah for sure for sure
• 2:05:53
  Rupert Isaacson: and perhaps a
• 2:06:00
  a greater level of it because you went through it personally and then you
• 2:06:07
  ended up having to help people who were either also going through it personally or
• 2:06:11
  in danger of going through it personally.
• 2:06:14
  I think what you're talking about here is kindness.
• 2:06:18
  Christine Dickson: Empathy.
• 2:06:19
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:06:20
  Yeah.
• 2:06:22
  It's easy to forget that section, even in this line of work.
• 2:06:29
  And God knows, you know, we horsey people can be A bossy judgmental lot and
• 2:06:38
  it can creep up without even noticing.
• 2:06:42
  Christine Dickson: I have a theory about that.
• 2:06:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Go on.
• 2:06:46
  Christine Dickson: And my theory is, is that a lot of children
• 2:06:49
  who grew up in dysfunctional homes found solace in animals.
• 2:06:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Ah.
• 2:06:58
  Christine Dickson: But.
• 2:06:58
  Did not learn nervous system regulation healthy communication, which people
• 2:07:06
  never think about learning communication.
• 2:07:09
  We just think it's just downloaded to us, but there's actually tools that you could
• 2:07:16
  learn to really help your relationships around healthy communication.
• 2:07:21
  We didn't learn that.
• 2:07:23
  We never felt what it was like to have power agency.
• 2:07:27
  So we, that feeling of being susceptible to everyone else and everyone else's
• 2:07:33
  thoughts comes with us into adulthood, no matter how powerful we actually are.
• 2:07:39
  So then our reactions to people are oftentimes overblown.
• 2:07:48
  We feel attacked by different opinions.
• 2:07:53
  Questioning can feel threatened by someone doing things differently or
• 2:07:58
  seeing things differently judged you know, it's that thing where we, we are,
• 2:08:04
  we can become very in tune with our own feelings or the feelings that we feel
• 2:08:09
  the animal is having and have a lot less compassion for the other person.
• 2:08:18
  How many times you hear people say, I.
• 2:08:21
  I love animals and I hate people.
• 2:08:23
  Yet we're people.
• 2:08:25
  You're a people.
• 2:08:26
  We're all a people.
• 2:08:30
  And so either you have a grandiose version, view of yourself that feels
• 2:08:34
  like you're the only good person in the world and everyone else is terrible.
• 2:08:41
  Or you have internalized a real negative and unhealthy view of yourself as human.
• 2:08:48
  And either way, it's, it's, you know, you don't have community.
• 2:08:54
  You don't have.
• 2:08:55
  The beautiful aspects that you can only get from having a relationship
• 2:09:02
  with another human being.
• 2:09:09
  Rupert Isaacson: Wise words.
• 2:09:12
  And yeah, that is a statement you hear so often and often from people who are
• 2:09:20
  supposedly in the equine assisted field.
• 2:09:24
  Or canine too, you hear that with dog people too and so on.
• 2:09:28
  And yeah, it does, that one always gives me pause.
• 2:09:30
  It's like, well then why are you, why are you doing it?
• 2:09:32
  Why are you working with people then?
• 2:09:34
  You know, yeah, deep down we're all
• 2:09:39
  searching for, crying for that connection.
• 2:09:42
  And we know it's there, we know it's possible.
• 2:09:44
  And I wonder if that statement that gets made is a way of, is actually an
• 2:09:48
  unconscious statement of grief, when saying, you know, I love animals but I
• 2:09:54
  hate people, meaning, I seem to find with animals what I can't find with people,
• 2:10:00
  but what I know I ought to be able to find with people, because they are my species.
• 2:10:05
  And I feel this grief of being unable to connect with people.
• 2:10:09
  With my species and this is a soul wound and I'm expressing
• 2:10:14
  it with these words Even though it's coming out in a weird way.
• 2:10:16
  Does that make sense?
• 2:10:18
  Christine Dickson: It's my it's my sword and shield, you know I say
• 2:10:23
  that Those walls that you built to protect yourself Also keep you on
• 2:10:32
  the other side of everything Yeah.
• 2:10:34
  That you want.
• 2:10:35
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 2:10:36
  Oi,
• 2:10:39
  oi, oi.
• 2:10:42
  Better saddle up and go for a contemplative ride in the forest.
• 2:10:49
  On my list for tomorrow.
• 2:10:51
  Listen, Christine, it's been amazing.
• 2:10:53
  I think there's more questions have come up in my mind.
• 2:10:56
  And I think, you know, as you know, and some of our listeners know that we
• 2:11:00
  have another podcast called Live Free, Ride Free, and I think I'd like you
• 2:11:03
  to please come on that and talk in a more biographical way about how you've
• 2:11:08
  managed to kind of self actualize.
• 2:11:11
  From the equine side, I think.
• 2:11:13
  Those of us listening definitely are all very curious about the IEMT.
• 2:11:18
  We're very curious about how you bring what you've learned about
• 2:11:23
  addiction and also hypnosis and so into perhaps ways we can inform our own
• 2:11:29
  practices and to do what we do better.
• 2:11:32
  I certainly am always looking for mentorship.
• 2:11:34
  How do we find you?
• 2:11:35
  How do we reach out to you?
• 2:11:37
  How do we engage you to help us learn this stuff?
• 2:11:42
  Christine Dickson: Yeah, sure.
• 2:11:43
  Well, my email address is On the path, C as in cat, H as in
• 2:11:48
  horse, T as in Tom, CHT at gmail.
• 2:11:52
  com.
• 2:11:52
  So it's on the path, CHT at gmail.
• 2:11:55
  com.
• 2:11:56
  My website is on the path coaching.
• 2:11:59
  net and you can find me on social media.
• 2:12:05
  Christine Dixon on Facebook.
• 2:12:09
  I have an on the path on Facebook business page.
• 2:12:12
  I have.
• 2:12:14
  Rupert Isaacson: People can reach out to you for mentorship people.
• 2:12:16
  People can.
• 2:12:17
  Yeah.
• 2:12:18
  Christine Dickson: Yeah.
• 2:12:19
  And on Instagram, it's a it's on the path underscore mentor.
• 2:12:24
  And then I have a my personal is Christine Dixon underscore on the path.
• 2:12:31
  But yeah, you can find me can mention me any way.
• 2:12:34
  I mean, and we're
• 2:12:35
  Rupert Isaacson: going to put these links in, you know, on the written
• 2:12:37
  thing at the end of this too.
• 2:12:39
  Christine Dickson: Yeah,
• 2:12:40
  Rupert Isaacson: but
• 2:12:43
  yeah I'm certainly going to be signing up for some mentorship.
• 2:12:46
  I could use it.
• 2:12:47
  Christine Dickson: I've had the idea and maybe it's something that we can
• 2:12:49
  talk about too, is the idea of like putting something together for trainers,
• 2:12:53
  for people who are working in this.
• 2:12:57
  Because look, I'm not saying that people can't be grind, you know, it,
• 2:13:02
  you know, when you see, especially if you identify with the horse's pain and
• 2:13:06
  suffering, and then you see people show up with the same ignorance, the same
• 2:13:10
  ignorance, the same ignorance, it's easy to lose your compassion for the
• 2:13:14
  person and connect with the feeling of that building on itself, instead of.
• 2:13:20
  Connecting with the idea that how great more and more people who believed this way
• 2:13:26
  are coming to learn things differently.
• 2:13:29
  How great is that?
• 2:13:31
  As opposed to I can't believe another, you know, like there's
• 2:13:33
  and that's just one example.
• 2:13:34
  Like, it really it's a lot of the way we're viewing things
• 2:13:38
  that creates our own suffering.
• 2:13:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, it's a reframing that we have to
• 2:13:41
  go through, but you know, it.
• 2:13:44
  One can't do that alone.
• 2:13:45
  And one needs, you know, one would have had the shaman, one would have had
• 2:13:50
  vision quest, one would have had, you know, those night, those vigils alone
• 2:13:54
  on the mountain, that sort of thing.
• 2:13:58
  But we don't anymore.
• 2:14:01
  So unless we, unless we deliberately stick that in some way and create it.
• 2:14:05
  Yeah.
• 2:14:06
  So absolutely.
• 2:14:07
  Well, I think we should put something together for.
• 2:14:12
  our fellow professionals in the field in a sort of a not we're here to teach
• 2:14:17
  you stuff more like a let's explore.
• 2:14:19
  How we might want to deepen our practices
• 2:14:25
  Okay, brilliant.
• 2:14:26
  I
• 2:14:26
  Christine Dickson: love that.
• 2:14:27
  Yeah
• 2:14:27
  Rupert Isaacson: to be continued then
• 2:14:29
  Christine Dickson: to be continued.
• 2:14:31
  Rupert Isaacson: Thank you christine
• 2:14:34
  Christine Dickson: Thank you so much for inviting me on here.
• 2:14:36
  I could talk to you for 10 hours and maybe take a nap and
• 2:14:41
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah, I think, I think, I'm sure, I'm sure, you know,
• 2:14:45
  I think most of the listeners would love to hear more from you too.
• 2:14:49
  There's, there's a lot more here to explore and unpack.
• 2:14:52
  So, let's maybe think about a round two.
• 2:14:55
  Until then, I'm grateful.
• 2:14:58
  And we see you next time.
• 2:15:00
  Christine Dickson: Thank you so much.
• 2:15:01
  Rupert Isaacson: Thank you.
• 2:15:02
  Christine Dickson: Thanks everybody.
• 2:15:03
  Rupert Isaacson: thank you for joining us.
• 2:15:04
  We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
• 2:15:06
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• 2:15:11
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